


Brienne and Jaime’s relationship: a textual analysis of their journey

by janie_tangerine



Series: in which I stash meta/essays/everything that's not fanfic [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Book 3: A Storm of Swords, Book 4: A Feast for Crows, Book 5: A Dance with Dragons, Character Analysis, Essays, F/M, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction, Peace, in which I'm done with a lot of things so have text analysis on how they're meant to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 02:27:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: In which I meta-ed and spent an unholy amount of words doing some asos/affc text analysis to break down the Jaime/Brienne relationship and bring up all the actual textual reasons of why I think they're book-canon headed for romance, of how they relate to each other and how their journeys intersect and parallel each other.





	1. Premise

**Author's Note:**

> HI EVERYONE nice to see you enjoyed the solo Brienne meta now you get the ship meta too. ;)
> 
> Now: this entire thing was originally part two of the essay collection I gave Gwendoline Christie at the con mentioned in the previous essay in these series. Since it's *long* and I went through All Their Damned Relevant Interactions, the parallelisms in their AFFC chapters and the ADWD one plus speculation and there's another piece of meta in between that was just about Jaime's dream I'm splitting this in chapters and putting up one or two per day until I'm done. Specifically, this is going to be:
> 
> 1: premise;  
> 2: ASOS part one - beginning to the harrenhal bath;  
> 3: Jaime's weirwood dream plus its connections to Brienne's dreams in AFFC;  
> 4: ASOS part two - bear pit to ending;  
> 5: AFFC part one - Jaime's chapters plus A Certain Parallelism;  
> 6: AFFC part two - Brienne's chapters;  
> 7: ADWD;  
> 8: conclusions.
> 
> Have fun because I went down fairly hard to crack this damned text and while I think a lot of things have been said to the end of time in fandom already maybe the entire thing in one piece can be helpful. ;) That said: this is me wanting to prove the point that there's every single textual reasons to think they're headed together and bringing the receipts because the gods forbid I would make it up, with good peace of anyone who doesn't think it's the case certain showrunners first and foremost ;)
> 
> DISCLAIMER: this meta is obv. choke-full of asoiaf quotes but they're there because I need to prove a point, nothing belongs to me, everything is GRRM's and I own nothing.

As we have established in the previous Brienne-centered essay, the relationship between Brienne and Jaime is groundbreaking in itself both for how it’s conceived and for its literary accomplishments: the following part of this collection will consist in a textual analysis of their interactions in the books from _A Storm of Swords_ to _A Dance With Dragons_ , with the target of describing its progression and its romantic undertones.

It’s not a coincidence that Jaime starts getting his own chapters from the start of his journey with Brienne in _A Storm of Swords_ , as their meeting and subsequent shared time together is, among other reasons, what starts him off on his own path/kickstarts his arc and his own storyline. There is a lot to say about his relationship with Brienne, which is textually paralleled to his relationship with Cersei all along and which is mutually beneficial for the both of them: on his side, it shows him that _someone_ can actually live according to knightly virtues and oaths and so can he, and he’s shown that he actually can aspire to be the person he wanted to be once. Simultaneously, their time together is what makes Brienne learn that the world isn’t black and white as she thinks and gets an entire new perspective on her life choices, which, though, do _not_ move her from her chosen path of wanting to be a knight, and that change will be explored in the following book, _A Feast For Crows_ , where she finally gets her own chapters as she starts off on her own journey (this while until that point she’s only seen through Catelyn’s or Jaime’s chapters).

This connection happens and develops in a context where the both of them end up truly and deeply respecting each other while seeing themselves for who they _really_ are: the author called it a play on the beauty and the beast trope rightfully, since we have the roles inverted (Brienne is beautiful inside and ugly outside and she’s called _Beauty_ mockingly because she’s perceived as a joke, Jaime is beautiful outside and perceived as ugly inside/dishonorable and throughout their relationship they learn to actually see each other for the actually _good_ persons they both are).

There are key events in their relationship during their time spent together in  _A Storm of Swords_ , which will be summed up here so they can be analyzed one by one later.

  * Their time with Jaime as Brienne’s prisoner;
  * Their fight in the woods where they assess each other’s skills;
  * Their capture by the Bloody Mummers;
  * Consequently, their shared time in captivity during which Jaime loses his right hand, Brienne ends up literally keeping him alive and helping him through it and he saves her from being raped by their captors;
  * Jaime’s confession to Brienne about the real reason why he killed Aerys in the Harrenhal baths;
  * Jaime’s prophetic weir wood dream and his subsequent decision to go back for her;
  * Jaime saving her in the bear pit;
  * Jaime giving her Oathkeeper (a Valyrian steel sword made out of Ned’s) to find Sansa and keep their oath to Catelyn _and_ save his honor with it.



This as far as their time _together_ is concerned; but even if in _A Feast of Crows_ they are separated, there are other instances from which we can deduce that the way they feel towards each other isn’t changed and actually is still pushing them to be the people they want to be, so the last part will be dedicated to discussing how their thoughts and feelings towards each other while they are apart are still textual hints that they might be headed for something more and the effects that their time together has had on both of them.


	2. A Storm of Swords - from the beginning to the Harrenhal bath

  1. **_The initial antagonism on both of their parts and how it influences their relationship_**



  

One thing that’s fundamental to point out when it comes to how Jaime and Brienne relate to each other is that they _don’t_ initially like each other: she’s convinced he’s an honor-less oathbreaker and he reacts likewise, mocking her appearance and her supposed skills.

Now, on  _his_  side, Jaime is the kind of person who tends to respect people in his trade of work, so it’s likely that if they met in a neutral situation like a tourney he’d have most likely being fascinated by her skills — this when throughout his first few _A Storm of Swords_ chapters he can’t help making remarks all the time about how she’s dull or ugly but admires her competence regardless of himself. On _Brienne’s_ side, given her character evolution up to that point, she would have automatically been antagonistic instead because for everything she knows, he’s in the Kingsguard without deserving and stayed in the kingsguard after breaking his most sacred oath so he’s - without deserving - in a place where she would do anything to be when she knows she has the skills for it (and the attitude as far as she’s concerned), so it’s just a reminder that as good as she is she’ll never have a chance at it while he does, and like, that’s the crux of it ie there’s way more antagonism on her part than his own.

So, their initial dislike matches: she thinks he’s a horrible person but she will keep him alive because she swore an oath to her lady and he thinks she’s playing at being knights even if something suggests him she’s better than that, and they antagonize each other all the time. This is actually a fundamental thing in the evolution of their relationship because it means they have to put effort in understanding each other and learning from each other, and it’s already an opposite starting point from Jaime and Cersei’s, where the two of them never actually thought to disagree because _they’re supposed to be the same person._  

This is also fundamental to Brienne’s character development as when they meet Brienne’s still pretty judgmental, and through meeting Jaime she eventually realizes that the world isn’t so black and white as she thinks it is and that vows aren’t beginning and end of everything and you can’t presume to uphold all of them especially if you’re working for someone like Aerys. On the other side, Jaime is presented with someone who regardless of being hindered by every possible thing when it comes to their trade (her gender, her status and her looks) is determined to be a good, true knight at all costs and actually means it, so he finally sees that actually… there is _someone_ who can and will do it at all costs, differently from what he has come to assume since he killed Aerys.

The thing is: she embodies what  _he_  would have wanted to be and  _he_  gets that after he gets past his preconceptions. But on the other side, the fact that he’s her _prisoner_ and technically _under her protection_ establishes a reverse knightly/lady dynamic which is fundamental to their balance, because the fact that he eventually comes to see her as  _his knight_  (this will be thoroughly discussed later) is also one of the reasons why he actually opens up to her about Aerys (when he never did with anyone else before) and trusts her that much regardless of whether he knows that, consciously or not.

  

  1. **_The fight in the woods_**



 

One pivotal moment of their time together is when, after already having traveled for a while and traded insults all along, things come to a heated conclusion in between them and they fight each other before being captured by the Bloody Mummers. It’s extremely important not only because it’s the last time Jaime gets to fight someone with his dominant hand, but also because it’s when he truly begins to see how Brienne is really _not_ playing around and actually has skills:

 

> Grunting, she came at him, blade whirling, and suddenly it was Jaime struggling to keep steel from skin. One of her slashes raked across his brow, and blood ran down into his right eye. The Others take her, and Riverrun as well! His skills had gone to rust and rot in that bloody dungeon, and the chains were no great help either. His eye closed, his shoulders were going numb from the jarring they'd taken, and his wrists ached from the weight of chains, manacles, and sword. His longsword grew heavier with every blow, and Jaime knew he was not swinging it as quickly as he'd done earlier, nor raising it as high. 
> 
> _She is stronger than I am._
> 
> The realization chilled him. Robert had been stronger than him, to be sure. The White Bull Gerold Hightower as well, in his heyday, and Ser Arthur Dayne. Amongst the living, Greatjon Umber was stronger, Strongboar of Crakehall most likely, both Cleganes for a certainty. The Mountain's strength was like nothing human. It did not matter. With speed and skill, Jaime could beat them all. But this was a woman. A huge cow of a woman, to be sure, but even so… by rights, she should be the one wearing down.

  

Previously, Jaime had grudgingly admitted to himself that she was more capable than she seemed, but _here_ is when he realizes that she’s actually his peer when it comes to _skills_ , and actually that she might be _even better than he is_ , and given that he puts a _lot_ of stakes on his prowess in a fight (of course he does since it’s his trade, at this point he has to recognize her as someone on his level if not higher. Before then, thought, he was _enjoying it_ and if reading the entire context, the entire scene takes on _different_ connotations:

 

> Jaime could not have said how long he pressed the attack. It might have been minutes or it might have been hours; time slept when swords woke. He drove her away from his cousin's corpse, drove her across the road, drove her into the trees. She stumbled once on a root she never saw, and for a moment he thought she was done, but she went to one knee instead of falling, and never lost a beat. Her sword leapt up to block a downcut that would have opened her from shoulder to groin, and then she cut at him, again and again, fighting her way back to her feet stroke by stroke.
> 
> The  _dance_  went on. He pinned her against an oak, cursed as she slipped away, followed her through a shallow brook half-choked with fallen leaves. Steel rang, steel sang, steel screamed and sparked and scraped, and the woman started grunting like a sow at every crash, yet somehow he could not reach her. It was as if she had an iron cage around her that stopped every blow.
> 
> "Not bad at all," he said when he paused for a second to catch his breath, circling to her right.
> 
> "For a wench?"
> 
> "For a squire, say. A green one." He laughed a ragged, breathless laugh. _"Come on, come on, my sweetling, the music's still playing. Might I have this dance, my lady?”_

 

First, the fight is described as a _dance_ , and he goes to the point of asking her outright, and that’s usually more of a romantic come-on than one you’d use in a fight. Of course he’s mocking her by calling her _sweetling_ or _my lady_ , but he still _does_ , and this is right before he realizes she’s actually _his match_. This doesn’t change before they actually meet the Bloody Mummers:

 

> A slick stone turned under Jaime's foot. As he felt himself falling, he twisted the mischance into a diving lunge. His point scraped past her parry and bit into her upper thigh. _A red flower blossomed, and Jaime had an instant to savor the sight of her blood_ before his knee slammed into a rock. The pain was blinding. Brienne splashed into him and kicked away his sword. 
> 
> Jaime drove his shoulder into her legs, bringing her down on top of him. They rolled, kicking and punching until finally she was sitting astride him. He managed to jerk her dagger from its sheath, but before he could plunge it into her belly she caught his wrist and slammed his hands back on a rock so hard he thought she'd wrenched an arm from its socket. Her other hand spread across his face. "Yield!" She shoved his head down, held it under, pulled it up. "Yield!" Jaime spat water into her face. A shove, a splash, and he was under again, kicking uselessly, fighting to breathe. Up again. "Yield, or I'll drown you!”
> 
> _"And break your oath?" he snarled. "Like me?”_
> 
> And the woods rang with coarse laughter.
> 
> Brienne lurched to her feet. She was all mud and blood below the waist, her clothing askew, her face red. _She looks as if they caught us fucking instead of fighting_. Jaime crawled over the rocks to shallow water, wiping the blood from his eye with his chained hands. Armed men lined both sides of the brook. Small wonder, we were making enough noise to wake a dragon. " _Well met, friends," he called to them amiably. "My pardons if I disturbed you. You caught me chastising my wife.”_
> 
> _"Seemed to me she was doing the chastising."_ The man who spoke was thick and powerful, and the nasal bar of his iron halfhelm did not wholly conceal his lack of a nose.

 

The end of this fight is _full_ of symbolism that verges on full-romantic implications: first there’s the dance, but then there’s the red flower _blossoming on her thigh_ (which is where blood could be most likely found after losing one’s virginity), then they fight each other with her pretty much coming out on top and Jaime throwing back in her face that she’d break her oath same as he did if she killed him (which is immensely important as at the end of her _A Feast For Crows_ chapters she refuses to kill him when Catelyn-turned-Lady-Stoneheart says it’s what she has to do to keep it) _and_ he’s the one thinking that they look like they’ve been caught fucking, _and_ tells the bandits that _he was chastising his wife_ — and actually, one of them replies that _she_ seemed to be chastising him, which given their positions right now (he’s her captor and she’s his jailer _but_ she’s also supposed to protect him and keep him safe until they get to King’s Landing) already sets them up as possible partners in more than one sense: if it wasn’t meant to be in the text, we wouldn’t have had a scene full of sexual connotations/innuendo where the fight starts like _a dancing proposal_ and he recognizes her not just as his peer but as someone who’s _better than him at this trade_. 

Of course, at this point they’re still pretty much enemies, but this _greatly_ changes when they get captured by the Bloody Mummers and have to actually stick up for each other in order to survive.

 

  1. **_Captivity with the Bloody Mummers and Jaime’s maiming_**



 

What happens just after then is that the Bloody Mummers cut off Jaime’s right hand in order to make sure he doesn’t try to escape and for insurance, and from then on he spends his time until Harrenhal dealing with the loss of his hand, crippling fever, being pretty much powerless and fighting suicidal instincts, this while the mummers keep on being a continuous threat to the both of them. This is a turning point in Jaime’s character evolution for bad and for good, because he has taken forcefully from him a part of his that is fundamental to his trade and livelihood and he gets to the brink of death… from which _Brienne_ saves him more than once.

Now, throughout their imprisonment, Brienne actually acts as his only lifesaver and she’s literally what keeps him alive in more than one way, this when _she’s not even supposed to like him_ , they both don’t like each other and got captured while fighting the hell out of each other. This is made clear from the very beginning of how their situation is described just after the hand loss:

 

> He had taken wounds before, but never like this. _He had never known there could be such pain_. Sometimes, unbidden, old prayers bubbled from his lips, prayers he learned as a child and never thought of since, prayers he had first prayed with Cersei kneeling beside him in the sept at Casterly Rock. _Sometimes he even wept, until he heard the Mummers laughing. Then he made his eyes go dry and his heart go dead, and prayed for his fever to burn away his tears_. Now I know how Tyrion has felt, all those times they laughed at him.
> 
> **_After the second time he fell from the saddle, they bound him tight to Brienne of Tarth and made them share a horse again._** One day, instead of back to front, they bound them face-to-face. **"The lovers," Shagwell sighed loudly, "and what a lovely sight they are. 'Twould be cruel to separate the good knight and his lady." Then he laughed that high shrill laugh of his, and said, "Ah, but which one is the knight and which one is the lady?"**
> 
> If I had my hand, you'd learn that soon enough, Jaime thought. His arms ached and his legs were numb from the ropes, but after a while none of that mattered. His world shrunk to the throb of agony that was his phantom hand, **and Brienne pressed against him. She's warm, at least, he consoled himself** , though the wench's breath was as foul as his own.

 

Just the fact that the Mummers's jester goes and _straight-up_ calls them lovers and asks who out of them is the knight or the lady is a textual hint of the role reversal going on with the two of them — of course Shagwell says it to make fun of them, but as we’ve seen, since it’s actually textual that _she_ is the knight-coded one and _he_ is the lady-coded one in their partnership (and that’s how it stays for most of them time), it’s not such a subtle hint of what’s going on here. Also, he notices that she’s warm and she’s pretty much his only source of comfort in this scenario, but then it goes way beyond that:

 

> His throat was so raw that he could not eat, but he drank wine when they gave it to him, and water when that was all they offered. Once they handed him a cup and he quaffed it straight away, trembling, and the Brave Companions burst into laughter so loud and harsh it hurt his ears. "That's horse piss you're drinking, Kingslayer," Rorge told him. Jaime was so thirsty he drank it anyway, but afterward he retched it all back up. _They made Brienne wash the vomit out of his beard, just as they made her clean him up when he soiled himself in the saddle._
> 
> (…)  
>    
>  Shagwell came hopping from leg to leg, dancing nimbly aside when Jaime slashed at him. Unbalanced, he staggered forward, hacking wildly at the fool, but Shagwell spun and ducked and darted until all the Mummers were laughing at Jaime's futile efforts to land a blow. When he tripped over a rock and stumbled to his knees, the fool leapt in and planted a wet kiss atop his head.

 

Brienne isn’t just his source of heat or moderate consolation: Brienne is _literally in charge_ of keeping him somewhat presentable and she performs _extremely_ intimate tasks with him such as cleaning him up whether it’s vomit or excrements, which is most likely not what she thinks she has signed up for _and_ something that in usual situations would require a great deal of trust on both parts. Of course here they’re thrown into it so it’s no usual situation, but she doesn’t refuse it and he doesn’t remark on feeling humiliated because of _that_ (more because of his lack of hand), and she’s willing to do that for him when she barely even knows him (she doesn’t seem to regret or remember it with negatively in her chapters in the following book as we will see later, so we can assume she didn’t see it as a weakness or something she eventually loathed doing). Also, she’s not present in the paragraph concerning Shagwell’s extremely unsettling behavior with him, but since in the following book she kills him and another of the Mummers while also thinking of what he did to Jaime, we can assume that she was very much paying attention and not liking one bit what the Mummers were doing. 

That doesn’t take into account when she pretty much convinces him not to let himself die:

 

> Jaime lay on his back afterward, staring at the night sky, trying not to feel the pain that snaked up his right arm every time he moved it. The night was strangely beautiful. The moon was a graceful crescent, and it seemed as though he had never seen so many stars. The King's Crown was at the zenith, and he could see the Stallion rearing, and there the Swan. The Moonmaid, shy as ever, was half-hidden behind a pine tree. How can such a night be beautiful? he asked himself. Why would the stars want to look down on such as me?
> 
> **"Jaime," Brienne whispered, so faintly he thought he was dreaming it. "Jaime, what are you doing?"**
> 
> **"Dying," he whispered back.**
> 
> **"No," she said, "no, you must live."**
> 
> **He wanted to laugh. "Stop telling me what do, wench. I'll die if it pleases me."**
> 
> **"Are you so craven?"**  
> 
> The word shocked him. He was Jaime Lannister, a knight of the Kingsguard, he was the Kingslayer. No man had ever called him craven. Other things they called him, yes; oathbreaker, liar, murderer. They said he was cruel, treacherous, reckless. But never craven. "What else can I do, but die?"
> 
> **"Live," she said, "live, and fight, and take revenge."** But she spoke too loudly. Rorge heard her voice, if not her words, and came over to kick her, shouting at her to hold her bloody tongue if she wanted to keep it.  
>   
>  Craven, Jaime thought, as Brienne fought to stifle her moans. Can it be? They took my sword hand. Was that all I was, a sword hand? Gods be good, is it true?

 

At this point, again, she isn’t even supposed to like him, but she still encourages him to not give up _and_ to take revenge on them by going on living. She definitely learned enough about him at this point to know that accusing him of being a coward would do the job, _and_ she’s also using his name rather than _Kingslayer_ , which she has done until now: this suggests that she doesn’t see him as just _that_ anymore, and she’s pretty much the reason why he actually _doesn’t_ give up on himself and keeps on living. This already establishes that by now they have a bond/connection regardless of whether they like it or not because no one comes out of this kind of situation after having stuck for each other without it, and we can see it also on his side when later he saves her from being raped. 

That’s also an extremely important part of their relationship and of his character, and it plays a very large role in how she changes her opinion of him later. Before he got maimed, he actually _did_ warn her about it, and _did_ try to make sure she wouldn’t be harmed even if he had technically no reason to:

 

> "I hope you're pleased, wench," Jaime whispered at Brienne. He coughed, and spat out a mouthful of blood. "If you'd armed me, we'd never have been taken." She made no answer. There's a pig-stubborn bitch, he thought. But brave, yes. He could not take that from her. "When we make camp for the night, you'll be raped, and more than once," he warned her. "You'd be wise not to resist. If you fight them, you'll lose more than a few teeth."  
>    
> He felt Brienne's back stiffen against his. "Is that what you would do, if you were a woman?"
> 
> _If I were a woman I'd be Cersei._ "If I were a woman, I _'d make them kill me_. But I'm not." Jaime kicked their horse to a trot. "Urswyck! A word!"
> 
>  (..)
> 
>  Jaime gave Urswyck a knowing smile. "All the gold in Casterly Rock. Why let the goat enjoy it? Why not take us to King's Landing, and collect my ransom for yourself? Hers as well, if you like. _Tarth is called the Sapphire_ _Isle_ , a maiden told me once." The wench squirmed at that, but said nothing.
> 
>  Aerys, Jaime thought resentfully. It always turns on Aerys. He swayed with the motion of his horse, wishing for a sword. Two swords would be even better. One for the wench and one for me. We'd die, but we'd take half of them down to hell with us. _"Why did you tell him Tarth was the Sapphire Isle?" Brienne whispered when Urswyck was out of earshot. "He's like to think my father's rich in gemstones ...”  
>   
> _ _"You best pray he does.”_

At this point, he’s actually blaming her for their capture, _but_ he still tries to find a way to make sure she isn’t harmed. We already know that Jaime does feel fairly strongly about the subject as he hated that he couldn’t do anything to save Rhaella from Aerys back in the day, and he’s entirely aware of what harm it would do to her, to the point where he says that if _he_ was a woman he’d rather die than letting it happen to him. Of course, his attempt to get the Mummers to turn on each other doesn’t work and he loses the hand… and the topic is brought back up _after_ he does:

 

> It was the next night when they finally came, three of the worst; Shagwell, noseless Rorge, and the fat Dothraki Zollo, the one who'd cut his hand off. Zollo and Rorge were arguing about who would go first as they approached; there seemed to be no question but that the fool would be going last. Shagwell suggested that they should both go first, and take her front and rear. Zollo and Rorge liked that notion, only then they began to fight about who would get the front and who the rear.
> 
> _They will leave her a cripple too, but inside, where it does not show_. "Wench," he whispered as Zollo and Rorge were cursing one another, "let them have the meat, and **_you go far away._** It will be over quicker, and they'll get less pleasure from it."
> 
> " _They'll get no pleasure from what I'll give them_ ," she whispered back, defiant.
> 
> **Stupid stubborn brave bitch**. She was going to get herself good and killed, he knew it. _And what do I care if she does? If she hadn't been so pigheaded, I'd still have a hand._ Yet he heard himself whisper, " **Let them do it, and go away inside**." **_That was what he'd done, when the Starks had died before him, Lord Rickard cooking in his armor while his son Brandon strangled himself trying to save him_**. "Think of Renly, if you loved him. Think of Tarth, mountains and seas, pools, waterfalls, whatever you have on your Sapphire Isle, think ...”
> 
> But Rorge had won the argument by then. "You're the ugliest woman I ever seen," he told Brienne, "but don't think I can't make you uglier. You want a nose like mine? Fight me, and you'll get one. And two eyes, that's too many. One scream out o' you, and I'll pop one out and make you eat it, and then I'll pull your fucking teeth out one by one.”
> 
> "Oh, do it, Rorge," pleaded Shagwell. "Without her teeth, she'll look just like my dear old mother." He cackled. "And I always wanted to fuck my dear old mother up the arse.”
> 
> Jaime chuckled. "There's a funny fool. I have a riddle for you, Shagwell. Why do you care if she screams? Oh, wait, I know." He shouted, "SAPPHIRES," as loudly as he could.
> 
> Cursing, Rorge **kicked at his stump again. Jaime howled.** _I never knew there was such agony in the world_ , was the last thing he remembered thinking. It was hard to say how long he was gone, but when the pain spit him out, Urswyck was there, and Vargo Hoat himself. "Thee'th not to be touched," the goat screamed, spraying spittle all over Zollo. "Thee hath to be a maid, you foolth! Thee'th worth a bag of thapphireth!" And from then on, every night Hoat put guards on them, to protect them from his own.
> 
>  Two nights passed in silence before the wench finally found the courage to whisper, "Jaime? Why did you shout out?"
> 
> "Why did I shout 'sapphires,' you mean? Use your wits, wench. Would this lot have cared if I shouted 'rape'?"
> 
> "You did not need to shout at all."
> 
> "You're hard enough to look at with a nose. Besides, I wanted to make the goat say 'thapphireth.'" He chuckled. **"A good thing for you I'm such a liar. An honorable man would have told the truth about the Sapphire Isle.”  
>   
> ** **"All the same," she said. "I thank you, ser."**

 

At this point, while he still wants to tell himself that he blames her for his current situation, he gives her genuine (for him) advice on how to best deal with it, which is actually telling in itself because he explains her how to _go away inside_ , which is actually straight-up dissociating (which in itself is one of the most common coping techniques people suffering from PTSD use _especially_ military veterans, which only makes sense as we’re talking about someone who has been in a war/in an extremely traumatic violent situation at fifteen-seventeen) and what Jaime does _every time_ he has the chance — of course Brienne hears none of that and is intending to fight, and he calls her a stupid bitch… but also _stubborn and brave_ in the same sentence as if he admires her for it, and he can’t hate her for rejecting his (for him) extremely good advice. And when as he sees that there is no way she will let it happen, he makes his chief captor aware of the others’s intentions by shouting out that if she’s touched they won’t get their supposed sapphires anymore, at the price of _extreme_ physical pain (he gets kicked in the healing stump). On her side, Brienne is so shocked by the fact that he saved her and put himself on the line for her that it takes her days to talk to him about it, and she wants to know _why_ he felt the need to when _he didn’t need to_ (and no one else might have done it for her). When she thanks him, she calls him _ser_ for the first time, using full-on courtesy, which suggests she has already started to think of him as not the monster she once thinks of. Then he spins it as a way of paying back his debts to her, but he wasn’t thinking _that_ when he saved her and he knows that perfectly.

To sum it up: their time as prisoners has brought them to actually stick up for each other and brought down their antagonism. Brienne has seen him at his lowest and had to perform extremely intimate labor for him and has literally kept him alive by convincing him to not let himself die, he’s shared with her something he hasn’t with anyone up to now and he has risked his neck to save her from being raped (something that _he_ would rather die than be subjected to): and this is what allows them to have their conversation in Harrenhal’s tub, which is _the_ turning point of their relationship. The last interesting thing to note before moving on to that, though, is how Jaime describes her at the end of the _A Storm of Swords_ chapter in question when he’s asked what she is to him:

 

> "This wench is bigger than me and uglier than you. You'd best see to her as well. She's still limping on the leg I pricked when we fought."
> 
> "I will ask after her. What is this woman to you?"
> 
> **"My protector." Jaime had to laugh, no matter how it hurt.**
> 
>  

Now, here he’s asking the local maester, Qyburn, to look after her as well because she might need medical attention (even if less than him), and so he’s worrying after her well-being regardless, but when asked straightly what she is to him… he’s laughing when he says it, but given that Jaime’s approach to anything is sarcasm/humor and he’s usually sincere when he does, when he describes her as _his protector_ , it’s telling that he straight-up admits it and accepts it. The way he sees it, she _is_ , and that’s _not_ what he thinks of Cersei at any point — actually, he technically sees himself as the one who’s supposed to protect _her_ , so Brienne is already put at an opposite spectrum. But that also comes to a conclusion in the bath scene.

 

  1. **_Harrenhal_** ** _’s bath and Jaime’s confession_**



 

After they arrive at Harrenhal and taken in as prisoners by Roose Bolton, and after Jaime gets treatment for his maiming, he goes to the bathhouse in the castle to wash and finds it already occupied by Brienne, and _this_ entire scene is a turning point in their relationship and their characters’s evolutions. In order, first he sends away both their attendants, suggesting that he’d rather do it with just Brienne ( _his protector_ ) in the room. Then he climbs _inside the same tub as Brienne_ — she tries to protest, but he goes in anyway.

 

> “Brienne shrunk away from him. “There are other tubs.”  
>   
> “This one suits me well enough.” Gingerly, he immersed himself up to the chin in the steaming water. “Have no fear, wench. Your thighs are purple and green, and I’m not interested in what you’ve got between them.” He had to rest his right arm on the rim, since Qyburn had warned him to keep the linen dry. He could feel the tension drain from his legs, but his head spun. “If I faint, pull me out. No Lannister has ever drowned in his bath and I don’t mean to be the first.”
> 
> “Why should I care how you die?”

 

At this point we can see that having been apart for a while has made her go back to feeling awkward and distrustful of him, which is also understandable given that they’re naked together in a bath (an extremely vulnerable position) and she has _issues_ with her looks. Anyway, what’s telling here is that Jaime has absolutely no issue telling her such things as _if I faint pull me out_ , as in: whether he knows it or not, he’s seeing her as someone who _will_ help him out of he needs it. Also, we can notice that ‘his head is spinning’, so he’s already in a vulnerable position and his brain to mouth filter isn’t working too well. Which becomes obvious in the next part, where _something else_ interesting happens:

 

> “Does the sight of my stump distress you so?” Jaime asked. “You ought to be pleased. I’ve lost the hand I killed the king with. The hand that flung the Stark boy from that tower. The hand I’d slide between my sister’s thighs to make her wet.” _He thrust his stump at her face. “No wonder Renly died, with you guarding him.”_  
> 
> She jerked to her feet as if he’d struck her, sending a wash of hot water across the tub. **Jaime caught a glimpse of the thick blonde bush at the juncture of her thighs as she climbed out. She was much hairier than his sister. Absurdly, he felt his cock stir beneath the bathwater. Now I know I have been too long away from Cersei.** He averted his eyes, troubled by his body’s response. “That was unworthy,” he mumbled. “I’m a maimed man, and bitter. Forgive me, wench. You protected me as well as any man could have, and better than most.”

 

Now: Jaime is obviously irked that she’s back to _not_ trusting him especially since as we saw he _hates_ that people never asked him why he killed Aerys and always assumed he was dishonorable without asking the question twice, and she’s supposed to somehow understand him as they’ve been together through their time in captivity. So he gives her another fairly mean line (about Renly, knowing that she will react to it, and she does, _jerking to her feet as if he’d struck her_ ), it works, and he gets a glimpse of her nakedness… _which gives him an erection_ he’s surprised that he’s even having in the first place. This will be discussed more in-depth later, but for now we can say that he _definitely_ is attracted to her whether he likes it or not, to the point where he’s _troubled_ by it because… _he’s only supposed to be attracted to Cersei_ , and instead _he’s also attracted to her_ and that doesn’t compute, and that is a metaphorical bucket of cold water in his face as he realized he was unnecessarily mean and he asks her for forgiveness honestly, and goes back to _you protected me better than most would have_ , which she hasn’t asked for. But he _really_ does see her in that light now.

Brienne doesn’t seem to accept that, though, and that gets him somewhat angrier:  
  


> “Are you as thick as a castle wall? That was an apology. I am tired of fighting with you. What say we make a truce?”
> 
> “Truces are built on trust. Would you have me trust—”
> 
> “The Kingslayer, yes. The oathbreaker who murdered poor sad Aerys Targaryen.”

 

At that point, the dams have opened and when she asks him if she’s _really_ supposed to trust _him_ , he’s beyond ready to inform her of _why_ he should and why he hates being called Kingslayer/oathbreaker — from that point on he tells her the entire true story of how it really went getting progressively angry about it, but what’s also important is that before he starts getting really into it, there’s _this_ :

 

> “Soiled my white cloak ... I wore my gold armor that day, but ...”
> 
> “Gold armor?” Her voice sounded far off, faint.
> 
> He floated in heat, in memory. “After dancing griffins lost the Battle of the Bells, Aerys exiled him.” _Why am I telling this absurd ugly child?_ ”

   
Never mind that at the beginning he sounds even sad about it (‘soiled the white cloak’ and _wore my gold armor_ as if it was something he should be proud of) and that her voice sounds _far off_ , he thinks that _he doesn’t know why he’s telling her_. Or better: he doesn’t _consciously_ know, but at this point it’s extremely likely that as he recognized her as a peer (who believes in the same notions about knighthood he was deprived of) and who he sees as someone he can implicitly trust to keep him alive, he can share with _her_ that story which he never shared with anyone else, but since he’s not ready to admit it to himself, he asks himself why he does it… _while_ he’s doing it.

Now, after he tells the story, he actually expects a reaction, but Brienne’s speechless, as it’s something she hadn’t been expecting to hear, and when she doesn’t immediately react, this happens:

  

> “The wench looked ridiculous, clutching her towel to her meager teats with her thick white legs sticking out beneath. “Has my tale turned you speechless? **Come, curse me or kiss me or call me a liar.** Something.”  
>   
> “If this is true, how is it no one knows?”  
>   
> “The knights of the Kingsguard are sworn to keep the king’s secrets. Would you have me break my oath?”

 

We established that at this point he’s really just saying what’s going through his head without a brain to mouth filter… and he straight-up tells her to either curse him or _kiss him_ , from which we can definitely deduce that _some part of him_ wants that. Except that before she can do either, he gets angrier, discussing how no one else actually bothered to ask him why he did it, especially Ned Stark, to the point where he gets so upset he almost faints, and _here_ we have the culmination of that entire scene:  
  


> “Pain shuddered through him ... and suddenly the bathhouse was spinning. _Brienne caught him before he could fall_. Her arm was all gooseflesh, clammy and chilled, **_but she was strong, and gentler than he would have thought. Gentler than Cersei_** , he thought as she helped him from the tub, his legs wobbly as a limp cock. “Guards!” he heard the wench shout. “The Kingslayer!”
> 
> **Jaime, he thought, my name is Jaime.**

 

Now, _here_ we have another Cersei comparison. Before, he was comparing them physically (and not finding Brienne specifically wanting, just _hairier_ , but he didn’t say he _didn’t_ like it), but now when _she catches him_ (which is what he told her to do in the beginning of the scene and she had sort of not openly accepted to do, except that _she’s doing it now_ , going back to her _protector_ role) he can only think that she’s strong (enough to hold him up) and _gentler than Cersei_ , and let’s remember that he’s really just saying what he’s thinking here without any second-guessing, and he _likes_ that she’s gentler than his sister. Now it doesn’t matter anymore that he’s been away from her too long and he thinks nothing of the sort, but he hates that Brienne still calls him Kingslayer, to the point where _he wants her to call him by his name_ (same as she did during their captivity), not by the nickname he hates just after he bared his soul to her.

Except that he doesn’t know that _it worked_ — it’s made abundantly clear in Brienne’s _A Feast For Crows_ chapters and in a couple of scenes that will be discussed later that such a conversation _did_ change her mind, but just after, she goes immediately back into the role she had on the road when it came to _his_ well-being:  
  


> “Bring me clean garb for him,” Brienne said, _“I’ll see that he’s washed and dressed._ ”
> 
> _The others were all too glad to give her the task._ They lifted him to his feet and sat him on a stone bench by the wall. Brienne went away to retrieve her towel, and returned with a stiff brush to finish scrubbing him. ”  
>   
> 

Same as she did on the road, she’s finishing washing him and dressing him, _but_ this time it’s not thrust on her, she volunteers for it, and no one stops her from doing it, which suggests that she definitely also sees herself as responsible for him. It doesn’t stop there:

 

> “She has thicker shoulders than I do, and a bigger neck, Jaime thought. Small wonder she prefers to dress in mail. Pink was not a kind color for her either. A dozen cruel japes leaped into his head, but for once he kept them there. Best not to make her angry; he was no match for her one-handed.

   
While she does it, he starts thinking about her _looks_ , and he _doesn’t_ say any of the ‘dozen cruel japes’, which he also _doesn’t_ , with the same phrasing, at the end of the bear pit scene that will be discussed later. And finally:  
  


> Qyburn had brought a flask as well. “What is it?” Jaime demanded when the chainless maester pressed him to drink.
> 
> “Licorice steeped in vinegar, with honey and cloves. It will give you some strength and clear your head.”
> 
> “Bring me the potion that grows new hands,” said Jaime. “That’s the one I want.”
> 
> “Drink it,” Brienne said, unsmiling, and he did.

 

At this point, she’s nagging at him to eat/drink to get better same as she did on the road and _he does_ ; again, she’s put in a position where she is if not in charge of his health and well-being, at least she _pushes him_ to care about it even if he’s attempting to refuse it — the moment she tells him to do it, he does it.

At this point, they established a _deeper_ connection because he’s told her his most guarded secret and she knows about everything there is to know about him ( _almost_ )… and then Roose Bolton frees him but not _her_ and implies that if her ransom isn’t enough he _will_ leave her to the bandits who kidnapped them first.

Jaime at this point leaves, figuring he’ll finally go back to Cersei and King’s Landing and leave everything behind… but that doesn’t go _quite_ like that.


	3. Jaime's weirwood dream and Brienne's dreams in AFFC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a small interlude because I need clear before going on to the bear pit that 'I dreamed of you' has _connotations. ;)_

  1. _**Jaime’s weirwood dream, along with its romantic connotations**_



 

Now, we’ll be on to Jaime’s infamous prophetic dream that he has while sleeping on a piece of weirwood on the way to King’s Landing, which is fundamental in both his character evolution and the way he sees Brienne. It also pairs nicely with some of the dreams Brienne has in her later _A Feast For Crows_ chapters that we will discuss at this point as it’s more relevant to the discussion and to show why Jaime’s dream actually is romantically connotated.

Just before he has the dream, he has a couple interesting thoughts concerning Brienne - first when he’s told that Vargo Hoat didn’t accept her ransom he goes:

 

>  The lie spared you a while, wench, be grateful for that much.

 

Then he reassures himself that she’s  _strong enough to survive a few rapes,_ the lie of course referring to the episode when he saved her, then he shrugs and decides that if she gets into trouble because of too much struggling he shouldn’t care because it’s her fault he’s a hand short — again, trying to distance himself from her now that he’s going back to the woman he loves — and he concludes with:  _Hoat would best be careful or she’ll snap that skinny neck of his and wouldn’t that be sweet?_

Or: even as he’s trying to shrug off any responsibility he might have in helping her or not, he’s basically wishing  _she_  would kill the guy who cut off his hand and he thinks she’s perfectly capable of doing that, which is an entire 180° turn from ‘who cares what happens to her’, in  _one paragraph._  He obviously doesn’t  _not_  care as much as he wishes he did. (He also doesn’t know that Brienne _will_ kill two of the guys in the Bloody Mummers for _him_ in _A Feast For Crows_ , but that’s another discussion entirely).

_Then_  he has the dream.

First telling point about it, even before he actually goes to sleep:

 

> The wench **would have told him he had to eat before he slept** , to keep his strength up, but he was more tired than hungry. He closed his eyes and  **hoped to dream of Cersei**.

 

Never mind that he thinks that Brienne would have nagged at him for not eating — and we’re going back to how she’s seen his _protector_ /nurturing figure —, but  _he hopes to dream of Cersei_ , and he actually kind of does, but when it comes to the end of it, after the bear pit, as we’ll see, he doesn’t say that he dreamed of  _Cersei._  He says  _I dreamed of you,_ so it’s not entirely out of this realm to assume that in the end he figured that dream was mostly about Brienne rather than anything else even if she hardly was the only one present.

So, he goes to sleep and dreams that he’s at Casterly Rock with two whole hands, and so far so good. And thinks:  _nothing can hurt me as long as I am whole_ , but then he sees some nameless shadows who prod him with spears and force him to go down some stairs even if he wants to go up, and then he thinks that nothing could harm him…  _if he had his sword_ , so now it’s also the sword other than the hand he’d have to use. 

Then he finally is down and is forced on his knees in the cavern under the castle, and finally he sees actual people - namely his father, Cersei and Joffrey and some more Lannisters behind them. He asks Cersei  _why has Father brought us here_  and she answers him that he didn’t bring  _them_ , the dark cave is  _Jaime_ ’s place and not hers.  _She’s holding a torch_ , which is  _the only light in the world_. He begs her not to leave him on his own and they all leave anyway, except that Tywin leaves him a sword that shines a light from the blade before he disappears, so  _that_  becomes the only light in the world as Cersei’s gone. And so far so good, except that  _this_  is when Brienne shows up - when everyone else has left him and he actually begged them not to go - and it was his  _family_. Never mind that until now he thinks he can’t be whole without Cersei.

Now, Brienne shows up,  _naked_ , has  _chained hands_ , asks him to unbind her and give her a sword so she can keep him safe like she promised, and he gives her one, which shines as well, so we have two lights now.

Not going over how she’s naked (and the fact that later he sees her as having a  _more womanly shape_ , which is already telling that he remembers their bath very well even if he’s still not consciously aware he might be attracted to her), that over there is a clear foreshadowing of the fact that he gives her Oathkeeper later and a knight’s quest along with it and therefore gives her the freedom she never had before then since it’s not like anyone took her seriously enough to trust her with that kind of thing and trust that she could do it, which is one of the things she craved most. Then: first, the moment Brienne gets the sword Jaime thinks  _she could almost be a beauty_  and  _she could almost be a knight_  when until this point he’s never thought of her in  _beauty_  terms (while he’s admitted she’s good at swordfighting at least). Then, Cersei tells him that he’s alive as long as the light is burning and then she leaves for good even if he begs her to stay. So he  _is_  dreaming of her, just not the way I suppose he wished for.

 Then they try to get out. When Brienne suggests him to go on her shoulders in order to leave he thinks  _then I could follow Cersei_ , so he wants to go through Brienne in order to find his sister.

_Then_  he runs into his old Kingsguard,  _just_  after thinking about how disappointed Ned Stark had been with him when he saw that he killed Aerys, except that Ned never shows up and his former brothers and Rhaegar Targaryen show up instead and throw all their disappointment at him, and I think it’s  _very_  interesting that the more they accuse him of everything he’s been accused of until this point and which he pretended didn’t matter the sword glows less bright, until the light goes out when he’s reminded that he swore to die for Aerys and Brienne’s sword is the only one still burning, so  _that one_ becomes the only light in the world *cough* and then he wakes up to realize he had been sleeping on weirwood.

_Then_ he goes back for Brienne and does what would count as the first proper knightly deed of his life since Aerys died. Given the symbolism, it can be argued that the dream represents that the part of his life going from getting into the Kingsguard up until that point is gone forever same as his right hand (along with his and Cersei’s relationship but let’s not digress too much); the light goes out after he’s been left behind or accused by people he should trust or that he used to know and whose fate he feels somehow guilty about, and  _he has both hands_  when it happens. Meanwhile he had been wanting to dream about Cersei and instead Cersei left him there, Brienne showed up  _looking almost like a beauty_ and being the only person who doesn’t leave him behind after all, never mind that at the beginning Cersei had the only light in the world, then he had it, then he and Brienne had it and then Brienne was the only one left holding it, and his plan of getting to Cersei through Brienne doesn’t work out - they can’t even get started with it because the ghosts get there first. Brienne is the only constant that is there before the light in his sword goes out and after, never mind that  _she_  is the reason why he has started doubting his cynicism in the first place, and then he goes and does a very  _romantic_  thing so that she doesn’t die. And she’s the last one standing with the only light left in the world. Which  _Cersei_ had first. Given the placing of elements in the dream, it’s highly probable that he’s  _already_  thinking of her in romantic terms, even if he has no clue yet. And considering that there was literally a passing of the torch here (which Jaime held up until one point which makes me think that he has to realize what he actually really wants from life before getting on with it) it’s most likely going to become literal soon.

Now, what happens after he saves her (which will be discussed in its own space later) is this piece of conversation:

>   
> 
> _“_ _Ser Jaime?_ _” Even in soiled pink satin and torn lace, Brienne looked more like a man in a gown than a proper woman. “I am grateful, but … you were well away. Why come back?”_
> 
> _A dozen quips came to mind, each crueler than the one before, but Jaime only shrugged. **“I dreamed of you,” he said.**_

Now, starting from the ending: the _I dreamed of you_ line is a very sweet thing to say if you’re Jaime Lannister, but we have to look at it in the context of the entire scene. 

Point the first: Jaime is a _romantic_ character. That’s half of what he’s about - even before we find out that he’s a romantic in the chivalrous sense of the term in his chapters, it’s plenty obvious while looking at the first important-in-terms-of-plot thing he did in these books as in pushing Bran out of the window. He said,  _the things I do for love._  We can discuss for a long time  _what kind_  of love is the kind that makes you push children out of a window as a knee jerk reaction to your safety possibly being in danger, but that’s why he did it and what drives his actions most of the time, and it’s not necessarily romantic love. He went into the Kingsguard  _also_  for love (but the rest of the reason was equally romantic though not in that sense), he’s the only one out of the Lannister siblings that actually gets along with the other two (and while obviously he doesn’t love them the same way he  _loves_  them both - we all talk about what he does for Cersei because that’s what’s prominent in the text, but he’s done equally good and bad things out of love for Tyrion as well), and when we’re talking about joining the Kingsguard, he actually did join also out of a romanticized view he had of it.

 

> That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Knight instead.

 

That romanticized view also obviously got warped with time - out of the main things he’s done up until this point that actually drove the plot, the one thing he  _didn’t_  do out of any kind of  _love_  or romantic notion was killing Aerys, but the point is that  _he_  hasn’t fundamentally changed in that sense. He probably didn’t even know that, but looking at the entire bear pit scene, the basics of it seem out of some courtly love song. If summarized as ‘defenseless maiden is in danger and a knight without many means to stop that danger helps her anyway and gets her out of it without expecting anything in return or without knowing if he’ll fail or not because she means something to him’, it’s not that wrong, and it does sound like your typical courtly romance if you don’t know who’s who.

The entire dialogue after Jaime gets out of the pit would fit in the trope if you don’t know that  _he_ ’s the one saying those lines and that he’s sarcastic about it. Never mind that he tells two different people that Brienne’s name is  _Brienne_  and not _wench_ even if  _he_  has called her wench up until this point, but he states that  _he only rescues maidens_  (he’s joking obviously, but knights  _do_  save maidens, right?), he’s told more than once that he’s done something incredibly foolish and he doesn’t even blink at it, and more than that, he didn’t even think before jumping into the bear pit when told that it was the only way he was going to get Brienne back.

_Then_  there’s the scene above, which seals the ‘it’s coded as a romance’ deal. Word choice first: Brienne calls him  _Ser_ again, so  _he_  is actually the knight in this specific instance, and it puts  _her_  as the damsel in distress (when the situation is actually reversed with the two of them the rest of the time). Brienne is hardly someone who’s ever been in the position to be the damsel - she went and became her own knight in shining armor after all, at the point where  _she_  beat bloody the guy who refused to marry her, but more on that later - which the text promptly reminds us a moment later, since  _she looked more like a man in a gown than a proper woman_ , never mind that she’s  _soiled_ in pink satin, word choice that makes me think that she was never supposed to look well in pink satin in the first place. We’re also reminded of that by the fact that she asks him why the hell would he come back, meaning that she wasn’t expecting anyone to come back for her and him least of all (suggesting us that she’s never gone and expected anyone to rescue her from anything, see point above). At which,  _a dozen quips came to mind, each crueler than the one before_ , which is pretty much what they’ve been doing up until now half of the time when they’re not too busy trying not to get killed - insulting each other - and considering that he’s been sassing up until this point he probably could have done that and went on with it, never mind that Brienne would have gotten that message loud and clear.

Instead he says that _he dreamed of her_. Now,  _she_  doesn’t know what the dream entailed and I doubt he told her off page, but that’s exactly the contrary of a cruel quip. He  _can’t_  bring himself to insult her straight to her face, and so instead he goes and says something that  _really_  does look out of some love song, because when you go tell someone you saved their life because  _you dreamed of them_  it doesn’t sound like you did that out of friendship or because you owe them. He could have told her owed her a debt because she kept him alive when they were hostages together and it would have been in character since Lannisters pay their debts, but he doesn’t even put it like that. Just that  _he dreamed of her._

**5.1 _Brienne’s dreams in_ A Feast For Crows**

Now, the romantic connotations are actually more prominent if compared with a couple of dreams Brienne has later in _A Feast For Crows_ : one she has early-ish in her journey, one midway and one fever dream she has towards the end after half of her face gets bitten off, which is actually the one with most parallels to the one above, but let’s also look at the other two first.

The first is in her second chapter and it’s actually pretty short and not at all detailed, but what matters is the basics - she dreams she’s in Renly’s tent and  _all the candles burn out_  (looks like the light of Jaime’s sword in his dream) and she can’t do anything to protect him, and then when it goes according to plan and sees Renly dying she realizes that it wasn’t Renly but Jaime and that  _she failed him_.

The second is in her fourth chapter, and is particularly interesting if you look at the one above as well. She goes to sleep thinking about being young and not being wary of most men because she assumed they all were like her father before before her septa not so kindly tells her that  _you’ll find the truth in your looking glass and not in the tongues of men_ , so basically ‘all men that don’t tell you that you’re darned ugly are lying and you shouldn’t fall for it’. (Let’s also remember for a moment that Jaime  _always_  told her that she was darned ugly.) She thinks about the prank about her maidenhood, thinks that maids have to be mistrustful in order to stay maids and  _thinks about beating Ronnet Connington bloody at Renly’_ _s melee_ :

 

> This time Ser Ronnet held a sword and not a rose. Every blow she dealt him was sweeter than a kiss. Loras Tyrell had been the last to face her wroth that day. He’d never courted her, had hardly looked at her at all, but he bore three golden roses on his shield that day, and Brienne hated roses. The sight of them had given her a furious strength. She went to sleep dreaming of the fight they’d had, and of Ser Jaime fastening a rainbow cloak about her shoulders.

 

Now, this is a very short paragraph, but it’s  _very_  telling. First, it’s not the first time Renly turns into Jaime in her dreams, but in the one before Renly’s face had become Jaime’s, in this one Jaime is  _already_  in Renly’s place. He isn’t even mentioned once. Then, after  _thinking about having to put effort into staying a maid and about having once thought that men did in fact find her appealing before someone told her the hard truth_ , she thinks about beating bloody the man who rejected her in front of her entire castle and beating Loras bloody, about whom she probably never cared but who she disliked just for having a sigil reminding her of Ronnet Connington (and well, I don’t know if she knew but  _Loras_  was the person receiving Renly’s affection when  _she_  also was in love with Renly, so…). Then she goes to sleep and dreams about beating Loras (aka someone who in theory was a love rival even if she didn’t know that) and getting her just reward, aka the rainbow cloak… except that  _Jaime_  gives it to her. And putting a cloak on someone else’s shoulder isn’t just what you do if you get into a Kingsguard of sorts, it’s what you do if you  _marry_  someone. Considering that Jaime has been superimposing over Renly in her head since her first chapter and that it’s imo obvious like  _hell_  that Brienne’s in love with him and that she’s actually a lot more aware of that than he is in that moment, and that it came after she was thinking about  _preserving her maidenhead_ , I think I can safely conclude that it’s not just coded romantically. It’s coded as  _Brienne of Tarth is head over heels for Jaime Lannister and she perfectly knows that._  And it’s that simple also because in comparison to Jaime’s dream they both were pretty short - there’s no need for further symbolism.

The fever dream she has in her eighth chapter, though, it’s a  _lot_ longer. And with a lot more symbolism.

So, first interesting parallel: she dreams she’s in Harrenhal’s bear pit and instead of the bear she’s facing Biter (the guy who bit off half of her face), who’s naked and stalking towards her. She asked for Oathkeeper adding  _please_  the same way she had in Jaime’s dream (she said  _please_  as well when asking for the sword), but she doesn’t get it and she can’t defend herself. Also, a bunch of dead people she killed/feels responsible for the deaths of,  _including Renly_  and Catelyn (who all look like corpses) watch the entire scene without moving, which is another parallel to Jaime’s ghosts even if they spoke and hers don’t, but I’d like to say it’s because she never pretended not to feel guilty about those deaths. Anyway, when Biter bites off her face  _again_ , she screams for Jaime. And this is the person who disarmed her own suitors and beat in combat the one that had hurt her most - she doesn’t  _need_  Jaime, but when she’s in the bear pit where he saved her the first time she calls for  _him_. Then Renly shows up again, guiding her but not telling her a thing, which is at the same time similar and different from Cersei in Jaime’s dream - they’re both significant others for both Jaime and Brienne but both don’t behave the way they wish they would and both Jaime and Brienne still have some kind of feelings for them, though while Jaime is definitely still in love with his sister I think Brienne realized that she was more in love with the idea of Renly by now. The third time she falls asleep - still feverish - she has to draw her sword, finds the scabbard empty and:

 

> She could not fight without her magic sword. Ser Jaime had given it to her. The thought of failing him as she had failed Lord Renly made her want to weep. “My sword, please, I have to find my sword.”

 

This is  _not_  the first time she asks for a sword that Jaime has to give her or has given her in this argument - it’s a leitmotiv by now. It’s as if she’s attached her whole well-being to that sword and of course she would since Jaime trusted his honor to her with it and pretty much it’s the greatest show of trust anyone would give her, so she wouldn’t want to let him down, but the thing is that in  _Jaime_ _’_ s dream  _he_  also had attached his whole well-being to the fact that he had given her the sword in the first place.

Then - after realizing where she’s ended up and that she might get hanged (and she thinks about what would Jaime and her father think,  _in that order_ ), there’s the last one.

She’s back at home and dressed in a pretty gown that looks horrid on her and it’s basically the day she was supposed to meet Ronnet Connington and she was young and hopeful and still entirely aware she wasn’t a good prospect. She thinks that Ronnet’s rose would be useless  _because she needs a sword._  Especially:

 

> Oathkeeper. I need to find the girl. I need to find his honor.

 

The sword, finding Sansa and giving Jaime back his honor are pretty much one single knot by now. Ronnet Connington comes into the room and rejects her same as before, and

  

> the griffins on his cloak rippled and blurred and changed to lions. Jaime! she wanted to cry, Jaime, come back for me!, but her tongue lay on the floor by the rose, drowned in blood.

 

Now  _Ronnet Connington_  has turned into Jaime, which considering that the guy was supposed to  _marry_  her and then refused, and considering that four chapters before she was dreaming of Jaime putting cloaks on her shoulders, it seems even more obvious to him what her subconscious is suggesting here. Point in case, though: until Jaime came to get her at the bear pit (the first place she had a fever dream of), she never was in the position of having anyone saving her. She’s been saving herself and beating unwanted suitors since forever, and before she met Jaime she had went and beaten Connington fair and square and with gusto in that melee, so she  _already_  had had her revenge. At this point, fever or not, she didn’t really need anyone to go defend her, but here she  _wants_  to call for Jaime. And she can’t because she bit her own tongue off, but what is textually telling is _Jaime, come back for me!_  in _A Feast For Crows_ versus  _I am grateful, but … you were well away. Why come back?_ in _A Storm of Swords_. 

She goes from “I’m grateful you  _came back_  but why would you” to “please  _come back for me,”_ ’ and considering that the latter is during a fever dream and not in a situation where there’s actually a brain to mouth filter, it’s entirely obvious that not only she’s in love with Jaime, but she had somehow read that  _I dreamed of you_  answer as romantic on some level, because even if I don’t think she presumes that he might want her back  _romantically_ , he still cares enough about her to  _go back_ _for her_ , which no one has done before in her experience, and she actually wants him to go back for her rather than wishing she had a sword so she could work it out with Ronnet herself. Never mind that I’d be curious to see if she had dreamed about Ronnet leaving after his cloak turned if she new about Jaime cold cocking him in the face for daring to say something bad about her, but never mind.

The basics of the group of fever dreams is the same as the basics of Jaime’s: they’re both somewhere they know  _and_  in the place they grew up in (she’s in Evenfall Hall, he’s in Casterly Rock), both of them feel helpless when confronted with either dead people whose death they felt guilty about or with alive people who hurt them/are hurting them/will end up doing it, both of them ask for swords, Brienne is given/asks for a sword  _from Jaime_ , they both end up in literally dark places, Brienne wants Jaime to come back for her and Jaime wants Cersei to come back for him and they both think about each other in not-exactly-friendly terms regardless of how aware are they of it - Jaime sees her as beautiful and a knight when at least the latter is exactly the way she’d want others to see her, she the man she was supposed to marry turn into Jaime when she’s already been dreaming about another man she was in love with turning into Jaime as well with the difference that in the last dream Jaime doesn’t really show up himself or saves her, but it’s because she thinks she’s failed him and it’s not like she’s presuming he’d return her feelings so why should he actually come?

 Still, the fact that he gave her that  _I dreamed of you_  answer is probably what opened the dam in that sense - never mind that in Brienne’s chapters she either calls him Jaime or Ser Jaime, so by now at least  _she_  recognizes he’s worthy of the title and that’s what  _he_ would like everyone else to see same as she’d like other people to see her as a real knight. Also:  _he_  dreamed of her without giving her the specifics, but  _she_  dreamed of him too and we can see both instances, and at least in her case it’s really not subtle at all that we’re not just talking courtly love or platonic feelings, we’re talking about her being in love with him. That’s a book later than Jaime’s dream though - I like to assume that  _his_  dream was where we got to see the first serious shift as far as what he feels for her goes and with  _hers_  we got to see her feelings for him way after they first shifted (which I’m pretty sure happened when he came back for her - she still calls him Kingslayer after the bath at Harrenhal). With the conclusion that  _all_  of these are meant to have romantic subtext in whichever degree. They’re more about the way  _they_  both feel rather than about whether they’re going to die for real or not, but regardless it also can’t be a coincidence that there are this many parallels both between Jaime’s dream and the last group of Brienne’s and in between all of Brienne’s, especially when the  _I dreamed of you_  line was probably the point of no return as far as their relationship (however you interpret it) is concerned.

Jaime could have said one of the dozen cruel quips he had thought of (which we  _aren’t_ told about) and she’d have just felt thankful and probably assumed that he just felt like he owed her and surely wouldn’t have assumed that at least there was  _one_  person that would play knight to the maiden she never got to be (and to whom she’s only too happy to play knight to his damsel-in-distress - after all it’s not just that  _she_ brought him to KL, it’s that  _she_ ’s the one going around Westeros with a sword looking to restore his honor, not himself). Instead he said something out of a love song even if he probably barely even realized it - after all, he  _shrugged_  and said it. It suggests like he didn’t even say it like something of importance - if you shrug and then say something, you either think it’s not that important or you think it’s obvious or something in between. Which is why it was the turning point for their relationship however one reads it, because Jaime on his side told her the kind of thing that until that point he might have told just Cersei, maybe, and even if he didn’t know it consciously it still speaks volumes for someone who  _does (impulsive) things out of love_ , and on the other Brienne never would have imagined someone ever telling her that kinda thing (never mind going back for her and never mind that in the Oathkeeper scene the first thing she would have told him at seeing his new white cloak would have been that  _it suited him well_  when he had assumed she’d say something like ‘you’ll soil it soon enough’). So, there is a lot of textual evidence that the dream itself was romantically-coded, especially when then it brought to the bear pit scene and the _I dreamed of you_ conclusion.


	4. A Storm of Swords - from the bear pit to the ending

  1. **_The bear pit_**



 

After having that dream, Jaime immediately convinces the guards he’s being sent to King’s Landing with to go back to Harrenhal to take back Brienne even if it would make his return even longer. When they arrive, though, they find it deserted:

 

> “All of a sudden, he knew what was happening. Have we come too late? _His stomach did a lurch_ , and he slammed his spurs into his horse, galloping across the outer ward, beneath an arched stone bridge, around the Wailing Tower, and through the Flowstone Yard.
> 
> They had her in the bear pit.”

 

When he realizes that they’re having her fight a bear, _his stomach does a lurch_ , and it’s obvious that at this point he really cares about what happens to her regardless. And when he gets to the aforementioned bear pit, he finds out he wasn’t wrong:

 

> Brienne wore the same ill-fitting gown she’d worn to supper with Roose Bolton. No shield, no breastplate, no chainmail, not even boiled leather, only pink satin and Myrish lace. Maybe the goat thought she was more amusing when dressed as a woman. Half her gown was hanging off in tatters, and her left arm dripped blood where the bear had raked her.
> 
> At least they gave her a sword. The wench held it one-handed, moving sideways, trying to put some distance between her and the bear. That’s no good, the ring’s too small. She needed to attack, to make a quick end to it. Good steel was a match for any bear. But the wench seemed afraid to close. The Mummers showered her with insults and obscene suggestions.
> 
> “This is none of our concern,” Steelshanks warned Jaime. “Lord Bolton said the wench was theirs, to do with as they liked.”
> 
> “Her name’s Brienne.” Jaime descended the steps, past a dozen startled sellswords.

 

At this point he’s certainly not discussing her looks — he’s more worried about whether she can take the bear or not, but what’s telling is that when Steelshanks — the guard that has been tasked to bring him back — calls Brienne _wench_ , Jaime, who has called her like that since they met, tells him _her name is Brienne_ , and it’s not the first time he does it — as in, now he _definitely_ cares for her to the point where he loathes anyone else calling her a derogatory name and meaning. Then he takes a better look at how the fight is going:

>   
> 
> “Kill him!” he shouted, but his voice was lost amongst all the other shouts. If Brienne heard, she gave no sign. She moved around the pit, keeping the wall at her back. Too close. If the bear pins her by the wall ...
> 
> The beast turned clumsily, too far and too fast. Quick as a cat, Brienne changed direction. There’s the wench I remember.”
> 
>  

Here he’s literally _cheering her on_ and thinking that _now_ he recognizes her skills, and he does a whole running commentary of where she might be going wrong while openly worrying about her, which is a complete turnaround from how they behaved at the beginning… that is until he realizes she can’t win because she doesn’t have a real sword.

 

> “You gave her a tourney sword.”
> 
> The goat brayed laughter, spraying him with wine and spittle. “Of courth.”
> 
> “I’ll pay her bloody ransom. Gold, sapphires, whatever you want. Pull her out of there.”
> 
> “You want her? Go get her.”
> 
> So he did.

 

And _this_ is specifically telling, because while it’s an extremely short exchange… he doesn’t even _think_ about it. If he wants to save her then he has to get her… and _so he does_ , jumping into the pit without even a plan or anything, because _he wants to help her that bad_ and he cares about her to the point of risking his life.

 

> Well, what in seven hells do I do now? He filled his fist with sand. “Kingslayer?” he heard Brienne say, astonished.
> 
> “Jaime.” He uncoiled, flinging the sand at the bear’s face. The bear mauled the air and roared like blazes.
> 
> “What are you doing here?”
> 
> “Something stupid. Get behind me.” He circled toward her, putting himself between Brienne and the bear.
> 
> “You get behind. I have the sword.”
> 
> “A sword with no point and no edge. Get behind me!”

   
 _He_ even admits he has no idea of what he has to do, _but_ he still has time to correct her when she calls him Kingslayer (for the last time) and they actually argued about who is supposed to get behind whom. Given that _this_ is the one instance in which Jaime saves her/acts as her knight rather than the reverse, it’s telling that Brienne still feels the need to be in between him and whatever danger they’re facing on account of having the sword when he doesn’t. His plan consists in hoping the men escorting him might kill the bear before it kills him, and to do that he puts himself _literally_ between the bear and Brienne:

 

> “Brienne tried to dart around, but he kicked her legs out from under her. She fell in the sand, clutching the useless sword. Jaime straddled her, and the bear came charging.”

 

_That works_ — the bear is killed, Jaime has saved her, they’re let out… and he goes back to correcting others about her titles:

 

> “And I’ll serve you the same if you give me trouble,” Steelshanks threw back. “We’re taking the wench.”
> 
> “Her name is Brienne,” Jaime said. “Brienne, the maid of Tarth. You are still maiden, I hope?”
> 
> Her broad homely face turned red. “Yes.”
> 
> “Oh, good,” Jaime said. “I only rescue maidens.” To Hoat he said, “You’ll have your ransom. For both of us. A Lannister pays his debts. Now fetch some ropes and get us out of here.” 

 

Now, this is just before the _I dreamed of you_ exchange we discussed before, and again, he corrects Steelshanks when he calls her _wench_ (even if _he_ keeps on doing that), he states that _he only rescues maidens_ (same as it usually happens in songs) and when later she asks him why he did it, he answers that _he dreamed of her_ as discussed in the previous section.

What’s important here is that this is the first _important_ decision Jaime takes after losing his hand — after, he puts himself back on a path of trying to be the person he wanted to be when he was young… and when he was young, he wanted to be a _true knight_ and help others and do _good things_ , and what he’s just done is one of the few true _heroic_ selfless acts performed by anyone in the books. This is extremely telling because on one side Jaime is finally in the knight role for once and doing something that’s coherent with the innate goodness in that ideology instead of something that he hates or might _soil_ him, while Brienne, who has always had to look out for herself and never had anyone wanting to be a knight to _her_ , for once is put in the position of having someone come back for _her_ and save her because he cares about her, and as stated before, ‘honorable knight saves maiden from monster’ is pure song material: selflessly risking his life for hers is the _first_ action that sets Jaime on a path of trying to be better and what he wanted to be, _and_ it’s what definitely changes Brienne’s mind when it comes to him, and neither would have happened if they hadn’t spent _that_ time together for bad and good.

This becomes obvious in the last scene they have in _A Storm of Swords_ , which is actually the crowning of their joint arc in the book: Jaime giving her Oathkeeper and sending her on a quest to save Sansa Stark.

 

  1. _**Oathkeeper**_



 

What happens in between the bear pit and the scene in question is that they go back to King’s Landing, Jaime’s relationship with Cersei doesn’t start back on a good foot as he had imagined (all the contrary), Brienne is imprisoned for Renly’s murder and Tyrion is accused of Joffrey’s death after Sansa disappears from King’s Landing, having been accused as well. After refusing Cersei’s request to kill his brother and after realizing that what he came back to is not what he wanted, Jaime talks to Loras Tyrell to have Brienne freed, as he thinks she killed Renly and got incarcerated for it, and _just after he and Cersei have a fairly bad row_ during which he refuses to kill Tyrion for her and refuses sex with her and she calls him _useless cripple,_ he has Brienne called to his room. Now, their first exchange is _already_ very telling:

>  
> 
> “The wench looked as ugly and awkward as ever, he decided when Tyrell left them. Someone had dressed her in woman’s clothes again, but this dress fit much better than that hideous pink rag the goat had made her wear. “Blue is a good color on you, my lady,” Jaime observed. “It goes well with your eyes.” _She does have astonishing eyes_.  
>    
>  “Brienne glanced down at herself, flustered. “Septa Donyse padded out the bodice, to give it that shape. She said you sent her to me.” She lingered by the door, as if she meant to flee at any second. “You look ...”  
>    
>  “Different?” He managed a half-smile. “More meat on the ribs and fewer lice in my hair, that’s all. The stump’s the same. Close the door and come here.”  
>    
>  She did as he bid her. “The white cloak ...”  
>    
>  “... is new, but I’m sure I’ll soil it soon enough.”  
>    
>  “That wasn’t ... I was about to say that it becomes you.”

 

While this exchange definitely shows is that they’re fairly bad at giving each other compliments,  what’s more important is that we can see that he’s noticing that the dress _suits_ her and that she has _astonishing_ eyes just after he remarked again about her looks, so he obviously doesn’t dislike her all that much; in his dream she had a womanly shape and now he’s noticing her looks without being as harsh as before. Also, he immediately assumes she thinks he’ll soil the white cloak… but she thinks _it becomes him_ , and this just after Cersei straight-up mocked him for not wanting to have sex in the Lord Commander’s apartments. By saying that _it becomes him_ , she’s pretty much telling him that she sees him as worthy of wearing it now, which is a complete turnaround from how they were to each other when they met. She’s also entirely grateful for him having defended her, except that he’s very much on the defensive, which is understandable especially taking into account that he’s about to go against his sister’s wishes for about the first time in his life:

>  
> 
> She came closer, hesitant. “Jaime, did you mean what you told Ser Loras? About ... about King Renly, and the shadow?”
> 
> Jaime shrugged. “I would have killed Renly myself if we’d met in battle, what do I care who cut his throat?”
> 
> “You said I had honor ...”
> 
> “I’m the bloody Kingslayer, remember? When I say you have honor, that’s like a whore vouchsafing your maidenhood.”
> 
>  

He’s obviously trying to get her in a twist here, but it’s also worth noticing that he just had a fairly upsetting conversation with _Cersei_ which he probably never thought he would have, so he’s rejecting all of her attempts to be thankful to him. This before informing her that the Arya Stark his father sent North is not the real one… and thus _betrays his own family to avoid Brienne running after her for nothing_ :

>  
> 
> “Why would you tell me all this, if it’s true? _You are betraying your father’_ _s secrets_.”
> 
> The Hand’s secrets, he thought. I no longer have a father. “I pay my debts like every good little lion. I did promise Lady Stark her daughters ... and one of them is still alive.”
> 
>  

Of course, the one who is alive is Sansa. They discuss her status as wanted for Joffrey’s murder, and Tyrion’s as well… and we have the other important bit of conversation.

 

> Brienne looked at him. “You do not believe he did it.”
> 
> Jaime **_gave her a hard smile. “See, wench? We know each other too well._** Tyrion’s wanted to be me since he took his first step, but he’d never follow me in kingslaying. Sansa Stark killed Joffrey. My brother’s kept silent to protect her. He gets these fits of gallantry from time to time. The last one cost him a nose. This time it will mean his head.” 
> 
> “No,” Brienne said. “It was not my lady’s daughter. It could not have been her.”
> 
> “ **There’s the stubborn stupid wench that I remember.”**
> 
> **She reddened. “My “name is…”**
> 
> **“Brienne of Tarth.”** **Jaime sighed.** **“I have a gift for you.”** He reached down under the Lord Commander’s chair and brought it out, wrapped in folds of crimson velvet.

 

First he’s the first one acknowledging that _they know each other too well_ , but what’s important is that _he has a gift for her_. Usually — as will be discussed later — in courtly love _ladies_ send knights on quests _with gifts_. In this case Jaime, after having the usual exchange about her name (and she called him _Jaime_ before, straight-up) says _he has a gift for her_ and brings out the priceless Valyrian sword, and here we have a _total_ reversal of the trope because _he_ is the one with a gift for _her_.

 

> “Nor I. _There was a time that I would have given my right hand to wield a sword like that. Now it appears I have, so the blade is wasted on me. Take it_.” Before she could think to refuse, he went on. “A sword so fine must bear a name. **_It would please me if you would call this one Oathkeeper_**. One more thing. The blade comes with a price.”
> 
> “Her face darkened. “I told you, I will never serve…” 
> 
> “… such foul creatures as us. Yes, I recall. Hear me out, Brienne. **Both of us swore oaths concerning Sansa Stark**. Cersei means to see that the girl is found and killed, wherever she has gone to ground ...”
> 
> Brienne’s homely face twisted in fury. “If you believe that I would harm my lady’s daughter for a sword, you—”
> 
> “Just listen,” he snapped, **angered by her assumption**. “ ** _I want you to find Sansa first, and get her somewhere safe. How else are the two of us going to make good our stupid vows to your precious dead Lady Catelyn_**?”
> 
> The wench blinked. “I ... I thought ...”
> 
> “I know what you thought.” Suddenly Jaime was sick of the sight of her. She bleats like a bloody sheep. […] So you’ll be defending Ned Stark’s daughter with Ned Stark’s own steel, if that makes any difference to you.”
> 
> “ **Ser, I ... I owe you an apolo ...** ”
> 
> He cut her off. “Take the bloody sword and go, before I change my mind. There’s a bay mare in the stables, as homely as you are but somewhat better trained. Chase after Steelshanks, search for Sansa, or ride home to your isle of sapphires, it’s naught to me. I don’t want to look at you anymore.”

  

He acknowledges that _he_ would have liked to use that sword but he can’t anymore because he won’t ever get back to his prowess… and so _he’s giving it to her_ as in someone who he _knows_ could wield it and has the strength and ability to. And who, not incidentally, _is following completely that knightly code he wishes he could have followed when he was young_. This by _utterly defying his sister’s wishes_ when for his entire life he’s done the contrary, as in, either acted on her request or acted thinking of what she would have wanted. He also puts it as the two of them fulfilling their oath and gets angered that Brienne might have thought otherwise, even if his attitude from before probably didn’t help her not getting assumptions. What’s important though is that he _wants_ to make good on their vows and to respect them, and the moment Brienne understands it her attitude changes at once. She calls him _ser_ and says she owes him an apology but he doesn’t want to hear it — this also speaks spades on how while he’s started on his own path he _still_ has a lot of anger issues to work through and he just started on it. The conclusion, though, is what seals the deal:

 

> “Jaime …” 
> 
> “ **Kingslayer,** **” he reminded her**. “Best use that sword to clean the wax out of your ears, wench. We’re done.”
> 
> Stubbornly, she persisted. “Joffrey was your ...”
> 
> “My king. Leave it at that.”
> 
> “You say Sansa killed him. Why protect her?”
> 
> Because Joff was no more to me than a squirt of seed in Cersei’s cunt. And because he deserved to die. “ _I have made kings and unmade them. Sansa Stark is my last chance for honor.” **Jaime smiled thinly. “Besides, kingslayers should band together. Are you ever going to go**_ **?”**
> 
> Her big hand wrapped tight around Oathkeeper. “ ** _I will. And I will find the girl and keep her safe. For her lady mother’s sake. And for yours_** _.” She bowed stiffly, whirled, and went_.”

 

First, she uses his name, _then_ he reminds her he’s supposed to be the _Kingslayer_ , but he doesn’t know that she’s completely rejected that notion as is obvious from her chapters in the next book — she never uses it again and actually gets upset when other people use it for him. But _he likens the both of them_ saying they’re both kingslayers and _should band together_ , probably assuming he’d anger her… except that instead she _doesn’t_ become angry, takes the offer for what she knows it is — Jaime trusting her with _his_ honor therefore the most precious thing he has when _she’s the only one who knows he has it_ is an act of extreme trust and she knows exactly what he’s doing, and by doing that he’s respecting her as a peer the way _no one else ever did_ , and the fact that he puts _his_ sake for last (most important) says a lot about how she’s feeling about this exchange — he matters as much as the vow she made to her liege lady and she’s determined to do it also to not betray the trust he put in her by _sending her on a quest with a priceless sword_ , which is most likely what she’s always dreamed of.

And he’s done that _just_ after a fairly painful conversation with his sister, and _just after,_ at the very end of this chapter (his last POV in _A Storm of Swords_ even if not the last time he appears, he does later to free Tyrion), _this_ is what he does when writing his story in the White Book of the Kingsguard, as last Lord Commander:

>  
> 
> “When he was done, more than three-quarters of his page still remained to be filled between the gold lion on the crimson shield on top and the blank white shield at the bottom. Ser Gerold Hightower had begun his history, and Ser Barristan Selmy had continued it, but **the rest Jaime Lannister would need to write for himself. He could write whatever he chose, henceforth.**
> 
> **Whatever he chose ...** ” 

 

This is a _fundamental_ passage in Jaime’s character evolution, because it means he realized he’s in charge of his own actions and _he_ gets to choose how to act and how is own story goes, and he does it after openly defying his sister’s wishes for the first time in his life and sending Brienne off on a quest also for _his_ honor, which means that for the first time in his life he’s in mind of doing what _he_ wants (or try to), and he could have never managed _without_ the time he’s spent with Brienne: meeting her gave him the push to see that it’s possible to be a honorable person, and sharing time with someone who forced him to deal with issues he hadn’t even thought about in years _and_ also helped him stay alive regardless of their feelings for him _and_ helped him to through an immensely traumatic experience helped him realize that he doesn’t only have to rely on his family or Cersei. And when Cersei doesn’t help him the way he had imagined she would (the same as _he_ would have done for her) he has to face the fact that they aren’t really the same person… and he can do it and find his own way also because he’s met someone who reminded him of everything he wanted to be and _could_ have been.

But at the same time, he made her understand that _someone_ sees her as the knight she’s always wanted to be and that she hasn’t been taken seriously for until meeting Catelyn, and we can see how this affected her in her _A Feast For Crows_ chapters, which in turn kickstart her own journey.


	5. A Feast for Crows: Jaime's chapters and saving each other parallelisms

While they have separated journeys in the following book (Jaime is sent away from King’s Landing after his relationship with Cersei deteriorates even more and Brienne goes around the Riverlands looking for Sansa to fulfill her vow), there is a lot of material that concerns their relationship and how it keeps on affecting them _after_ their ways are parted; as far as Jaime is concerned, it shows that the push she gave him towards wanting to be a better person has turned into sincere efforts to try to be who he wanted to be, while as far as Brienne is concerned it shows that not only she’s not thinking about him in a merely friendly sense, but that she’s taken the oath she swore him as a life mission. Also, Brienne’s chapters give amazing insight into her personality (as we have seen in the beginning). What’s telling when it comes to _their_ relationship, though, isn’t only that they think about each other quite often, but they defend each other’s honor without the other being aware of that and on Brienne’s side, we see that she’s literally willing to die for him, which is a complete turnaround from the beginning of their story together.

As Jaime’s chapters have less material, we will go through what’s relevant in _his_ point of views first and Brienne’s in the ending.

 

  1. **_Jaime’s chapters_**



 

The first time Jaime thinks of Brienne is while his men are (supposedly) looking for Tyrion on Cersei’s orders after Jaime himself freed him, and he knows entirely too well he won’t find him, and he’s guarding his father’s corpse:

 

> The gold cloaks would find more of interest beneath the whores' skirts than beneath their beds. He wondered how many bastard children would be born of the pointless search.
> 
> **_Unbidden, his thoughts went to_** ** _Brienne_** ** _of Tarth. Stupid stubborn ugly wench. He wondered where she was. Father, give her strength. Almost a prayer ... but was it the god he was invoking, the Father Above whose towering gilded likeness glimmered in the candlelight across the sept?_** Or was he praying to the corpse that lay before him? Does it matter? They never listened, either one. The Warrior had been Jaime's god since he was old enough to hold a sword. _Other men might be fathers, sons, husbands, but never Jaime Lannister, whose sword was as golden as his hair. He was a warrior, and that was all he would ever be._
> 
> _I should tell Cersei the truth, admit that it was me who freed our little brother from his cell. The truth had worked so splendidly with Tyrion, after all._
> 
>  

What’s interesting here is that his thoughts go to her _unbidden_ , so he wasn’t expecting it. He calls her, _again_ , stupid, stubborn and ugly, but a moment later he _wonders where she is_ and _prays_ for her well-being and a god he usually doesn’t even feel connected to. That is _extremely_ telling given that he hasn’t seen himself as a father (until this point, and later he will try to reconnect with his only remaining son but Cersei will sabotage it, and it shows that he actually does _want_ to), but not even as a _husband_ , so why is he thinking _that_ just after praying for Brienne to have the strength to get through her quest and come out of it successful? He obviously isn’t realizing that he might be seeing her in a different light _now_ , but his subconscious might have other ideas. And it’s also telling that what he immediately thinks later is that he should come clean with Cersei about his role in Tyrion’s freeing same as he came clean with Tyrion while freeing him about his involvement when it came to the end of Tyrion’s first marriage. At this point we should probably add that Jaime was forced by his father to lie to Tyrion about his wife’s intentions and he’s been feeling guilty about it all along, so it’s another fairly traumatic subject he has tried to not confront for his entire life… but he’s doing it _now_ after vowing to himself to be a better person.

Later, as he heads for Riverrun on Cersei’s orders when he hadn’t wanted to (because he wanted to keep his vow to Catelyn to not raise arms against her family), we have the next relevant instance:

  

> The world grew ever greyer as they drew near to Harrenhal. They rode beneath slate skies, beside waters that shone old and cold as a sheet of beaten steel. _Jaime found himself wondering if_ _Brienne_ _might have passed this way before him. If she thought that Sansa Stark had made for Riverrun... Had they encountered other travelers, he might have stopped to ask if any of them had chance to see a pretty maid with auburn hair, or a big ugly one with a face that would curdle milk_. But there was no one on the roads but wolves, and their howling held no answers.
> 
>  

As he goes towards the castle belonging to Sansa’s family, he wonders _if Brienne passed by_ , and he imagines asking around if anyone has seen either of them (Brienne has been asking about a pretty maid with auburn hair herself for the entire length of her journey herself). So he’s still hoping that she might fulfill her mission (which again, he gave her going against his sister’s wishes), but at the same time it’s very much possible that he _wishes he could have gone with her_ as he thinks about asking _the exact same questions Brienne herself_ has been asking in her part of the story, and this still adds up with the fact that he’d rather be doing knightly things (like Brienne) than go on a mission he doesn’t care for (the atmosphere is also sketched with how dull the scenery looks — waters shining like a sheet of beaten steel and slate skies doesn’t sound too alluring). Which becomes _extremely_ important later as we’ll see discussing a few lines from his one chapter in the last book published, _A Dance With Dragons_.

 This is corroborated by the next mention we’ll discuss, which happens while he talks to Brynden Tully and tries to convince him to surrender:

>  
> 
> "That was thoughtful of you, ser, but I fear I must decline. I prefer the comforts of my pavilion."
> 
> "Whilst Catelyn enjoys the comforts of her grave.”
> 
> **I had no hand in Lady Catelyn's death, he might have said, and her daughters were gone before I reached King's Landing. It was on his tongue to speak of** **Brienne** **and the sword he'd given her, but the Blackfish was looking at him the way that Eddard Stark had looked at him when he'd found him on the Iron Throne with the Mad King's blood upon his blade**. "I came to speak of the living, not the dead. Of those who need not die, but shall..."
> 
>  

The moment he’s accused of Catelyn’s death he _does_ think of defending himself and pointing out that he gave Brienne that infamous sword to fulfill their oaths and that he’s been thoroughly honorable throughout all of this specific situation… _but_ since the Blackfish looks at him as if he thinks he already knows everything there is to know about his supposed honor (and Jaime is extremely bitter when it comes to how Ned Stark had judged him just after the fact), he doesn’t even try it. But _he thinks of the quest he sent her on_ the moment his honor is put into question and when he wants to try and convince others that he’s better than they think.

Of course, he eventually does _not,_ but it’s telling that at this point he’s literally tying his own honor to Brienne’s quest same as he told her at the end of _A Storm of Swords_ , and he’s merely accepting that others won’t understand it even if he tries.

The most important occasion, though, is when he _actively defends her honor_ while not knowing that _she’s doing the same thing_ at more or less the same time.

  

  1. **_Defending each others’s honor: Ronnet Connington and the Bloody Mummers_**



 

When it comes to Jaime, the chief scene concerning Brienne in his _A Feast For Crows_ chapters is when he meets one of her former betrothed, but we need to have the full picture in order to realize the significance of the gesture.

 

> The Maid of Tarth _had been betrothed three times_ , but she had never been courted until she came to Highgarden.
> 
> _Brienne had been betrothed at seven, to a boy three years her senior, Lord Caron's younger son, a shy boy with a mole above his lip. They had only met the once, on the occasion of their betrothal. Two years later he was dead, carried off by the same chill that took Lord and Lady Caron and their daughters. Had he lived, they would have been wed within a year of her first flowering, and her whole life would have been different_. She would not be here now, dressed in man's mail and carrying a sword, hunting for a dead woman's child. More like she'd be at Nightsong, swaddling a child of her own and nursing another. It was not a new thought for Brienne. It always made her feel a little sad, but a little relieved as well.
> 
> Lord Grandison's castellan had once made that error. Humfrey Wagstaff was his name; a proud old man of five-and-sixty, with a nose like a hawk and a spotted head. The day they were betrothed, _he warned Brienne that he would expect her to be a proper woman once they'd wed. "I will not have my lady wife cavorting about in man's mail. On this you shall obey me, lest I be forced to chastise you_.” She was sixteen and no stranger to a sword, but still shy despite her prowess in the yard. **Yet somehow she had found the courage to tell Ser Humfrey that she would accept chastisement only from a man who could outfight her. The old knight purpled, but agreed to don his own armor to teach her a woman's proper place. They fought with blunted tourney weapons, so Brienne's mace had no spikes. She broke Ser Humfrey's collarbone, two ribs, and their betrothal.** He was her _third prospective husband_ , and her last. Her father did not insist again.
> 
>  In the mêlée at Bitterbridge she had sought out her suitors and battered them one by one, Farrow and Ambrose and Bushy, Mark Mullendore and Raymond Nayland and Will the Stork. She had ridden over Harry Sawyer and broken Robin Potter's helm, giving him a nasty scar. **And when the last of them had fallen, the Mother had delivered Connington to her. This time Ser Ronnet held a sword and not a rose. Every blow she dealt him was sweeter than a kiss**.

 

Now: Brienne’s had three perspective betrothals, and all of them ended badly. We don’t know what exactly went on with Ronnet Connington until we reach Jaime’s chapter as said before, but we know that one of them died, that she refused to marry someone who couldn’t beat her in a fight and that whatever happened with Ronnet, when she fought him _every blow she dealt him was sweeter than a kiss_ , so whatever he did to her, she certainly took her own revenge on him, figuring that no one else would.

What happens in Jaime’s chapter that we referenced above (the one where he wonders if she might have walked his same way) is that he goes back to Harrenhal, meets some allies and runs into the aforementioned Ronnet Connington.

 

> But the knight standing over the pit was bigger; a husky, bearded man in a red-and-white surcoat adorned with griffins. Connington. What’s he doing here? Below, the carcass of the bear still sprawled upon the sands, though only bones and ragged fur remained, half-buried. Jaime felt a pang of pity for the beast. At least he died in battle. “Ser Ronnet,” he called, “have you lost your way? It is a large castle, I know.”
> 
> Red Ronnet raised his lantern. “I wished to see where the bear danced with the maiden not-so- fair.” His beard shone in the light as if it were afire. Jaime could smell wine on his breath. “Is it true the wench fought naked?”
> 
> “Naked? No.” He wondered how that wrinkle had been added to the story. “The Mummers put her in a pink silk gown and shoved a tourney sword into her hand. The Goat wanted her death to be amuthing. Elsewise...”
> 
> “... the sight of Brienne naked might have made the bear flee in terror.” Connington laughed. Jaime did not.

 

We can deduce from this that their fight in the bear pit has made the rounds and that people are already starting to embellish it (like a song), but we also can have an idea of Connington’s personality from how he describes Brienne as ‘not-so-fair’ and calls her wench, and then he _laughs_ when he says that seeing her naked would make the bear flee. _Jaime doesn’t_ laugh, even if _he_ himself has called her wench himself and described her as not so fair — but he seems to dislike it if anyone else does.

  

> “You speak as if you know the lady.”  
>   
>  “I was betrothed to her.”  
>    
> **That took him by surprise. Brienne had never mentioned a betrothal.** “Her father made a match for her...”  
>    
> “Thrice,” said Connington. “I was the second. My father’s notion. I had heard the wench was ugly, and I told him so, but he said all women were the same once you blew the candle out.”
> 
> “Your father.” Jaime eyed Red Ronnet’s surcoat, where two griffins faced each other on a field of red and white. Dancing griffins. “Our late Hand’s... brother, was he?”

 

It’s interesting to note that Jaime is _surprised she didn’t mention it_ , as if he’s assuming that she _would_ given that he shared his most guarded secret with her. Of course Brienne would have had no reasons to do it, but he still is surprised that she _didn’t_ , and we can deduce that he thinks they’re in such relations that she might have, _or_ he’s subconsciously very interested in how Brienne’s betrothals might have gone. Now we learn that he indeed was Brienne’s second match and that he _hadn’t_ wanted to marry an ugly woman.

>   
>  (…) Ser Ronnet was a landed knight, no more. _For any such, the Maid of Tarth would have been a sweet plum indeed_. “How is it that you did not wed?” Jaime asked him.
> 
>  
> 
> “Why, I went to Tarth and saw her. I had six years on her, yet the wench could look me in the eye. **She was a sow in silk, though most sows have bigger teats. When she tried to talk she almost choked on her own tongue. I gave her a rose and told her it was all that she would ever have from me**.” Connington glanced into the pit. “The bear was less hairy than that freak, I’ll—”
> 
>  
> 
> **Jaime** **’s golden hand cracked him across the mouth so hard the other knight went stumbling down the steps. His lantern fell and smashed, and the oil spread out, burning. “You are speaking of a highborn lady, ser. Call her by her name. Call her Brienne.”**
> 
>  
> 
> Connington edged away from the spreading flames on his hands and knees. “Brienne. If it please my lord.” He spat a glob of blood at Jaime’s foot. “Brienne the Beauty.”

 

Now, never mind that Jaime describes her as a _sweet plum for a landed knight_ (as in, a knight without a strong House behind him and not a greatly amount of worldly possessions nor inheritance, which is what _he_ would be should he renounce the Kingsguard and change sides), but we get the entire story from Ronnet: he humiliated her in public, describes her crudely (‘a sow in silk’ and ‘a freak’) and compares her to the bear to end it, and while Jaime has _himself_ thought of her crudely before, the moment he hears it he punches Ronnet hard enough _with the fake_ hand (so one that would likely hurt more) that he spits out blood and asks him to _call her by her name_ , as if _he_ is the only one who’s allowed to call her derogatory names which have turned into nicknames at this point but _no one else can_ , and he resorts to violence when he hears someone who could have married her talk bout her in such terms. As in: he’s straight-up knightly defending _her honor_ , when she’s never had anyone do that for her _and_ she actually took her own vengeance herself already (but he doesn’t know it). Of course Brienne doesn’t know he might have done it, but it doesn’t matter — for the second and last time, Jaime is framed as _her_ knight and the only person who’s ever taken a stand for her (both defending her life and her honor).

 

On the other side of the Riverlands, though, _she’s doing exactly the same_ _thing._ First, she seems to be unable to hear people referring to him as _Kingslayer_ :

  

> "And the king is just a boy," said the oldest of the four septas. "Who is to rule us till he comes of age?"
> 
> "Lord Tywin's brother," said a guardsman. "Or that Lord Tyrell, might be. Or the Kingslayer."
> 
> "Not him," declared the innkeep. "Not that oathbreaker." He spat into the fire. **Brienne let the bread fall from her hands and wiped the crumbs off on her breeches. She'd heard enough.**
> 
> That night she dreamed herself in Renly's tent again. All the candles were guttering out, and the cold was thick around her. Something was moving through green darkness, something foul and horrible was hurtling toward her king. **She wanted to protect him, but her limbs felt stiff and frozen, and it took more strength than she had just to lift her hand. And when the shadow sword sliced through the green steel gorget and the blood began to flow, she saw that the dying king was not Renly after all but Jaime Lannister, and she had failed him.**

Just before having a dream where _Renly_ (her first love) _turns into Jaime_ and she can’t protect either of them, she hears someone calling him oathbreaker and she immediately excuses herself as food falls from her hands because _she can’t hear any more of it_. That’s extremely telling in showing how she has changed her mind about him since they met, but other than that — about which she can’t do anything without either blowing her cover or revealing his secret — what’s important is that _she literally takes vengeance for his maiming_. This will be discussed again later, but for what concerns this specific argument, we have a scene where she runs into two of the Bloody Mummers after the group disbands, one of which is the Shagwell who tried to rape her and that Jaime thought one of the worst of the group:

  

> The morningstar was whirling. Choose one, Brienne told herself. Choose one and kill him quickly. Then a stone came out of nowhere, and hit Shagwell in the head. Brienne did not hesitate. She flew at Timeon.
> 
> He was better than Pyg, but he had only a short throwing spear, and she had a Valyrian steel blade. Oathkeeper was alive in her hands. She had never been so quick. The blade became a grey blur. He wounded her in the shoulder as she came at him, but she slashed off his ear and half his cheek, hacked the head off his spear, and put a foot of rippled steel into his belly through the links of the chain mail byrnie he was wearing.
> 
> Timeon was still trying to fight as she pulled her blade from him, its fullers running red with blood. **_He clawed at his belt and came up with a dagger, so Brienne cut his hand off. That one was for Jaime_**. "Mother have mercy," the Dornishman gasped, the blood bubbling from his mouth and spurting from his wrist. "Finish it. Send me back to Dorne, you bloody bitch."
> 
> She did.
> 
> //
> 
> "I have no spade."
> 
> **"You have two hands." One more than you left Jaime.**
> 
> "Why bother? Leave them for the crows."
> 
> //
> 
> Shagwell was on his knees when she turned, looking dazed as he fumbled for the morningstar. As he staggered to his feet, another stone slammed him in the ear. Podrick had climbed the fallen wall and was standing amongst the ivy glowering, a fresh rock in his hand. "I told you I could fight!" he shouted down.  
>   
>  Shagwell tried to crawl away. "I yield," the fool cried, "I yield. You mustn't hurt sweet Shagwell, I'm too droll to die."
> 
> As she knelt to lay the body down, she thought, The fool will make his try now, whilst my back is turned.
> 
> She heard his ragged breathing half a heartbeat before Podrick cried out his warning. Shagwell had a jagged chunk of rock clutched in one hand. Brienne had her dagger up her sleeve.
> 
>  A dagger will beat a rock almost every time.
> 
> She knocked aside his arm and punched the steel into his bowels. "Laugh," she snarled at him. He moaned instead. "Laugh," she repeated, grabbing his throat with one hand and stabbing at his belly with the other. "Laugh!" _She kept saying it, over and over, until her hand was red up to the wrist and the stink of the fool's dying was like to choke her. But Shagwell never laughed. The sobs that Brienne heard were all her own. When she realized that, she threw down her knife and shuddered_.
> 
>  Podrick helped her lower Nimble Dick into his hole. By the time they were done the moon was rising. Brienne rubbed the dirt from her hands and tossed two dragons down into the grave.

 

What happens here is that she kills _two_ out of their old captors and _twice_ she thinks she’s doing it also to take revenge on what they did to Jaime, and one of them is Shagwell as in the one Jaime especially loathed _and_ who had also tried to rape her. It’s actually telling that while she kills Time in a fight where she _didn’t_ have to cut his hand but still does — _for Jaime —_ she kills Shagwell in a way more brutal and bloody manner so much that she herself is shocked of what she's doing, when she realizes she’s crying as she’s committing the act. Now, it’s obvious that, as said before, she _had_ been paying attention during their captivity, and the fact that she has such a reaction when killing the person who was an immediate danger and taken liberties with _the both of them_ while stabbing him to death and certainly not following a knightly code herself says a lot about how she’s not gotten over her captivity and how much of a trauma it was to her as well. Except that she tells him to laugh (which he had done at the two of them throughout their imprisonment) _also_ while taking revenge for Jaime, too, and same as he punched her former suitor defending her honor, _she killed two of their captors also in order to avenge his hand loss and thinking about it all along while also forgetting a lot of her knightly oaths and stabbing one of them in a frenzy of violence she usually tries to avoid_.

So, we have an extremely interesting parallel in these two scenes because on one side Jaime does something very gallant and knightly in order to defend her name and honor from someone who was a source of public humiliation for her (and of more trauma, as we’ll see later), while she’s killed people in an extremely _not_ clean or knightly way also to avenge the loss of his sword hand, including someone Jaime considered one of the three worst of the entire crowd. Of course, same as she has no idea he’s defending her honor, he doesn’t know she’s _killing others for him_.

But that’s not the entire extent of it, as we’ll see now: Brienne not only is willing to do that, but she’s willing _to die for him_ herself, as we’ll see at the end of the next section.


	6. A Feast for Crows: Brienne's chapters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I salty that we never got any of this in the show? Probably. *shrug*

  1. **_Brienne’s chapters_**



 

**3.1: _Brienne’s quest_**

 

One thing we can immediately notice out of reading Brienne’s POV chapters is that what she thinks of Jaime is _immediately_ tied to the fact that not only he respects her as a knight, but also _sent her on a quest_ therefore validating her skills like no one else has done before, and we can also surmise that she thinks extremely highly of him back:

  

> "I will find the girl and keep her safe," Brienne **had promised Ser** **Jaime** , back at King's Landing. "For her lady mother's sake. And for yours." Noble words, but words were easy. Deeds were hard. She had lingered too long and learned too little in the city.  
> 
> Every gust of wind drove swirling clouds of dead leaves across the rutted road. They made a rustling sound as they scuttled past the hooves of the big bay mare that Jaime Lannister had bestowed on her. As easy to find one leaf in the wind as one girl lost in Westeros. **She found herself wondering whether** **Jaime** **had given her this task as some cruel jape.** Perhaps Sansa Stark was dead, beheaded for her part in King Joffrey's death, buried in some unmarked grave. **How better to conceal her murder than by sending some big stupid wench from Tarth to find her**?
> 
> **Jaime would not do that. He was sincere. He gave me the sword, and called it Oathkeeper.** Anyway, it made no matter. She had promised Lady Catelyn that she would bring back her daughters, and no promise was as solemn as one sworn to the dead. The younger girl was long dead, Jaime claimed; the Arya the Lannisters sent north to marry Roose Bolton's bastard was a fraud. That left only Sansa. Brienne had to find her.

 

In the first instance, she calls him _ser_ (using the courteous form of his title, which she _hadn’t_ done before he tried to save her as we saw above), and the fact that _she promised him_ to find Sansa is the first thing that comes to mind. She recognizes that her words are _noble_ but that her deeds must be equally noble and that’s harder to do, but the fact that _she promised him_ is driving her forward. 

Nonetheless, at some point she _does_ wonder whether he’s tricking her (and let’s remember that, as we saw in the previous part, she has been in between people that made fun of her to the point of courting her on a bet for the entirety of her life so it _is_ something that she would automatically assume of anyone), and we can see that she _has_ sadly interiorized what most people say or think about her (as in that she’s stupid for even attempting to be good at her trade and not be the proper lady she’s technically supposed to be)… _but_ then she immediately decides that no, _Jaime_ (no _ser_ here) wouldn’t do that to her, that no one who’d give her a priceless sword and name it _Oathkeeper_ would especially when they _do_ know each other and shared the experiences they had. _He_ is not like anyone else who’d try that. And whether he did or not doesn’t matter because she wants to hold on to her promise to Catelyn at all costs _even if Catelyn is dead_ and so… she _has_ to find Sansa because it’s her duty and she means to uphold it at all costs.

This becomes even clearer in a further passage, always from the beginning of her journey:

>   
> 
> Brienne remembered her fight with Jaime Lannister in the woods. It had been all that she could do to keep his blade at bay. He was weak from his imprisonment, and chained at the wrists. **No knight in the Seven Kingdoms could have stood against him at his full strength, with no chains to hamper him.** **Jaime** **had done many wicked things, but the man could fight**! **_His maiming had been monstrously cruel_**. It was one thing to slay a lion, another to hack his paw off and leave him broken and bewildered.
> 
> Suddenly the common room was too loud to endure a moment longer.
> 
> (…)
> 
> But **she had another longsword hidden in her bedroll**. She sat on the bed and took it out. Gold glimmered yellow in the candlelight and rubies smoldered red. When she slid Oathkeeper from the ornate scabbard, _Brienne's breath caught in her throat_. Black and red the ripples ran, deep within the steel. Valyrian steel, spell-forged. I **t was a sword fit for a hero**. When she was small, her nurse had filled her ears with tales of valor, regaling her with the noble exploits of Ser Galladon of Morne, Florian the Fool, Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, and other champions. **Each man bore a famous sword, and surely Oathkeeper belonged in their company, _even if she herself did not_**. "You'll be defending Ned Stark's daughter with Ned Stark's own steel," Jaime had promised. Kneeling between the bed and wall, she held the blade and said a silent prayer to the Crone, whose golden lamp showed men the way through life. **_Lead me, she prayed, light the way before me, show me the path that leads to Sansa. She had failed Renly, had failed Lady Catelyn. She must not fail Jaime. He trusted me with his sword. He trusted me with his honor_**.

 

The first part is _extremely_ interesting because we can see that regardless of what she thinks of his morals (or thought of his morals) she _respects him as a fighter the same way he respected her_ when they fought — he was thinking she was stronger than him, _she_ was thinking that at full strength she couldn’t have beaten him, and she sees his loss of hand not just as an impediment or something that makes him less handsome, but as a _monstrous cruelty_ : she sees what it means from a professional point of view (she’s also someone who handles swords for a living so she can understand how bad a loss it would be) and actually she thinks it would have been better to die… and _she can’t stay in the room anymore_ because thinking about it upsets her that much. So she goes upstairs and takes out Oathkeeper to look at it, and from here we can see that she thinks the sword is _fit for a hero from the songs **but she herself is not one**_ , so she doesn’t see herself as a great knight or anything of the kind (even if she’s the embodiment of what any knight should be), and the fact that Jaime had _promised_ her that she might be gives her further strength to go on in her quest. And when she prays for good luck, it’s obvious that she sees her life as a series of failures… _except for Jaime_ , who she can still not fail _while being entrusted with his mythical sword and his honor_. Given that she knows his entire backstory and what it might mean to him, she’s taking the quest as her life’s meaning at this point, but that’s also _because he trusted her with it_ … which no one else has done until now. The fact that first he showed her that the world isn’t as black and white as she once thought _and_ then entrusted her with the most sacred thing to a knight that someone might (his honor) is what’s propelling her even if she’s knows it’s not going to be easy (deeds are hard, after all).

The fact that Brienne feels _this_ hard about her quest and Jaime’s importance for her can be seen in a later instance where she ends up in a (supposed) dead end while looking for Sandor Clegane (assuming Sansa went with him) and pours her heart out to a septon living in a community of religious men, the Quiet Isle:

 

> "Do you?" He leaned forward, his big hands on his knees. "If so, give up this quest of yours. The Hound is dead, and in any case he never had your Sansa Stark. As for this beast who wears his helm, he will be found and hanged. The wars are ending, and these outlaws cannot survive the peace. Randyll Tarly is hunting them from Maidenpool and Walder Frey from the Twins, and there is a new young lord in Darry, a pious man who will surely set his lands to rights. **Go home, child. You have a home, which is more than many can say in these dark days.** You have a noble father who must surely love you. Consider his grief if you should never return. Perhaps they will bring your sword and shield to him, after you have fallen. **Perhaps he will even hang them in his hall and look on them with pride ... but if you were to ask him, I know he would tell you that he would sooner have a living daughter than a shattered shield**.”
> 
> " **A daughter." Brienne's eyes filled with tears. "He deserves that. A daughter who could sing to him and grace his hall and bear him grandsons. He deserves a son too, a strong and gallant son to bring honor to his name**. Galladon drowned when I was four and he was eight, though, and Alysanne and Arianne died still in the cradle. I am the only child the gods let him keep. **The freakish one, not fit to be a son or daughter**." All of it came pouring out of Brienne then, like black blood from a wound; the betrayals and betrothals, Red Ronnet and his rose, Lord Renly dancing with her, the wager for her maidenhead, the bitter tears she shed the night her king wed Margaery Tyrell, the mêlée at Bitterbridge, the rainbow cloak that she had been so proud of, the shadow in the king's pavilion, Renly dying in her arms, Riverrun and Lady Catelyn, the voyage down the Trident, dueling  **Jaime** **in the woods** , the Bloody Mummers,  **Jaime** **crying "Sapphires** ,"  **Jaime** **in the tub at Harrenhal** with steam rising from his body, the taste of Vargo Hoat's blood when she bit down on his ear, the bear pit,  **Jaime** **leaping down onto the sand** , the long ride to King's Landing, Sansa Stark, **the vow she'd sworn to** **Jaime** , the vow she'd sworn to Lady Catelyn, Oathkeeper, Duskendale, Maidenpool, Nimble Dick and Crackclaw and the Whispers, the men she'd killed ...
> 
> "I have to find her," she finished. "There are others looking, all wanting to capture her and sell her to the queen. **_I have to find her first. I promised Jaime. Oathkeeper, he named the sword. I have to try to save her ... or die in the attempt_**.”

 

At the suggestion of going back home, first she thinks wistfully that she might have and her father might love her but that she sees herself as some kind of disappointment because she can’t be what society wants her to be and the kind of daughter that he would deserves, same as while she’s a knight (or tries to be one), as in a traditionally male role, she can’t even be the son he’d deserve and she can’t either bring him honor or give him grandsons, and then it’s obvious that she _definitely_ sees her attempts at knighthood as a series of failures — almost all of what _pours out of her_ is negative experiences. Except that as she unloads to the Elder Brother, we can see that she mentions her first love (Renly) three times and Catelyn (who is the first one who took her in her service not out of obligation) twice, then there’s a list of mostly traumatic events… and Jaime is mentioned _five_ times unless we also count the voyage down the trident and the bear pit (then it’d be seven, eight with her following line), so _he_ is what is on her mind most right now and _he_ is the one she’s desperately not wanting to disappoint… because _he named a sword after keeping oaths and he trusted it to her and she promised him_ and she could never go back on her word, not when it’s about the one thing she has left before declaring her quest a failure.

The fact that regardless of her strength she’s _not_ at all secure in her skills and that at the same time she sees him as someone she would have wanted with her is made obvious as well further down:

  

> Perhaps she had made a mistake in abandoning Ser Creighton and Ser Illifer. They had seemed like honest men. **Would that** **Jaime** **had come with me, she thought ... but he was a knight of the Kingsguard, his rightful place was with his king**. **_Besides, it was Renly that she wanted_**. I swore I would protect him, and I failed. Then I swore I would avenge him, and I failed at that as well. I ran off with Lady Catelyn instead, and failed her too. _The wind had shifted, and the rain was running down her face_.
> 
> //
> 
> Or I could take the kingsroad south, Brienne thought. **I could slink back to King's Landing, confess my failure to Ser Jaime, give him back his sword, and find a ship to carry me home to Tarth, as the Elder Brother urged**. The thought was a bitter one, **_yet there was part of her that yearned for Evenfall and her father, and another part that wondered if_** ** _Jaime_** ** _would comfort her should she weep upon his shoulder. That was what men wanted, wasn't it? Soft helpless women that they needed to protect_**?

 

At first, when she’s alone on the road at the beginning of her journey, she _wishes that Jaime had come with her_ , automatically assuming that if _she_ can go on a quest then _he_ can to (so she’s absolutely recognizing him as a peer, and then immediately reminds herself that she’s supposed to be in love with Renly… _who she failed to protect_ , same as Catelyn. Still, her first thought is that she _wishes Jaime had gone with her_.

But much _later_ , after she talks to the Elder Brother and she considers giving up on her quest (she does not, but she considers it), Jaime is back to _Ser_ Jaime (more formal and less emotional attachment), she admits that while it would be bitter to fail it would feel good to go back to her father… and then she wonders if _Jaime_ (not _ser_ anymore) would **let her weep on his shoulder** , which is an extremely vulnerable thing to do and something Brienne has _not_ done with anyone else and doesn’t wish to do with anyone else, and then she wonders _if that’s what men wanted_. This _could_ be a possible parallel with the fact that in _his_ previous chapter he thought that being husbands and fathers was for _other men_ while he couldn’t possibly be one just after _praying for her to succeed_ , while at the same time she doesn’t think she’s allowed to be vulnerable with anyone… but she wants _him_ to be the one she can be vulnerable with.

This ties in with the fact that while Jaime is obviously still trying to make sense of his feelings and relationship with Cersei and is therefore not seeing her in a possible romantic interest light yet (consciously, at least), _she_ instead superimposes him on Renly all the time, is fairly open about being attracted to him regardless of how much she doesn’t like that she is, _and_ that is also tied to how she remembers their trip together — after all, Jaime might have wondered if she passed by the places _he_ did, but _she_ remembers him as she passes through the places _they_ went through during their imprisonment. In order:

 

> Only a cramped small tub like this one. At Harrenhal the tubs had been huge, and made of stone. The bathhouse had been thick with the steam rising off the water, and  ** _Jaime_** ** _had come walking through that mist naked as his name day, looking half a corpse and half a god. He climbed into the tub with me, she remembered, blushing_**. She seized a chunk of hard lye soap and scrubbed under her arms, trying to call up Renly's face again.
> 
>  

In one occasion, she takes a bath and remembers the one they shared together — first she blushes thinking about him _going into the tub with her_ , then describes him as half a god remembering exactly that he also was naked… and then _tries to_ call up Renly’s face, most likely failing. Assuming that calling someone _half a god_ is not a thing anyone does with people they are not attracted to, we can also point out this is something that also happens early in her chapters. Not much later, when she thinks of the melee we discussed before, there’s something way more telling:

 

> In the mêlée at Bitterbridge she had sought out her suitors and battered them one by one, Farrow and Ambrose and Bushy, Mark Mullendore and Raymond Nayland and Will the Stork. She had ridden over Harry Sawyer and broken Robin Potter's helm, giving him a nasty scar. And when the last of them had fallen, the Mother had delivered Connington to her. This time Ser Ronnet held a sword and not a rose. Every blow she dealt him was sweeter than a kiss.
> 
> Loras Tyrell had been the last to face her wroth that day. He'd never courted her, had hardly looked at her at all, but he bore three golden roses on his shield that day, and Brienne hated roses. The sight of them had given her a furious strength. She went to sleep dreaming of the fight they'd had, and of Ser Jaime fastening a rainbow cloak about her shoulders.

 

The significance of that dream has already been discussed before, _but_ what’s interesting to note here is that first she thinks of all her accomplishments in battle (and given that she won a Kingsguard place that she thought she might never get otherwise she most likely sees that as the greatest achievement she’s reached for now), _including the man who humiliated her because he wouldn’t marry her,_ and a man who was actually the lover of the man _she_ loved (but she most likely didn’t know)… and then she dreams _of that fight_ (which again, crowning achievement of her career until now) and of _Jaime_ putting the rainbow Kingsguard cloak on her, not _Renly_. Again, given that switching cloaks in Westeros is a marriage ritual and that she superimposed _Jaime_ on Renly as in her first love, the fact that it’s the Kingsguard cloak (something they _both_ technically want) doesn’t change the fact that it’s obvious where her affections are turning to.

  _Then_ we can also see how the time she spent with Jaime has left a mark on her: we discussed before how she definitely lost her usual calm when killing the two Bloody Mummers, but the rest of her chapters have quite the number of hints that while Jaime has been fairly traumatized by that captivity, _she_ also was:

 

>  I know. It was on that very road that Ser Cleos Frey had died, and she and Ser Jaime had been taken by the Bloody Mummers.  **Jaime** **tried to kill me** , she remembered, though he was gaunt and weak, and his wrists were chained. It had been a close thing, even so, but that was before Zollo hacked his hand off. **Zollo and Rorge and Shagwell would have raped her half a hundred times if Ser** **Jaime** **had not told them she was worth her weight in sapphires**.
> 
> //
> 
> Brienne tied her mare to a wall sconce, took off her helm, and shook out her hair. She was searching for some dry wood to light a fire when she heard the sound of another horse, coming closer. **Some instinct made her step back into the shadows, where she could not be seen from the road. This was the very road where she and Ser** **Jaime** **had been captured. She did not intend to suffer that again**.
> 
> //
> 
> "Seven?" The thief paled. When the guards seized hold of him he tried to fight, but feebly, as if he were already maimed. Watching him, **Brienne could not help think of Ser Jaime, and the way he'd screamed when Zollo's arakh came flashing down**.
> 
> //
> 
> The stone wall was old and crumbling, but **the sight of it across the field made the hairs on Brienne's neck stand up**.
> 
> That was where the archers hid and slew poor Cleos Frey, she thought... but half a mile farther on she passed another wall that looked much like the first and found herself uncertain. The rutted road turned and twisted, and the bare brown trees looked different from the green ones she remembered. **Had she ridden past the place where Ser** **Jaime** **had snatched his cousin's sword from its scabbard? Where were the woods they'd fought in? The stream where they'd splashed and slashed at one another until they drew the Brave Companions down upon them**?
> 
>  Ghosts. "A wall I rode by once. It does not matter." **_It was when Ser_** ** _Jaime_** ** _still had both his hands. How I loathed him, with all his taunts and smiles._** "Stay quiet, Podrick. There may still be outlaws in these woods.”
> 
>   

First, it’s obvious that she is _extremely_ wary of ending up in the same situation again and that she entirely understands how fundamental he was in saving her from being raped during their capture (and it’s _ser_ again when he helps her while it was _Jaime_ when he tried to kill her). She doesn’t want to take that road again if she can help it, she _definitely_ remembers his maiming as a traumatic event, her hairs _stand up_ when she walks near someplace they had gone through before being captured, she remembers _entirely_ what happened during their fight and then she thinks, _how I loathed him_ , implying that _she doesn’t loathe him anymore_ and that she actually thinks that she was very wrong in doing so. At this point even if we don’t have her POV during _A Storm of Swords_ , we can definitely reconstruct the progression of her feelings towards Jaime up until we actually have her chapters: loathing, peer respect even if mixed with loathing, horror at his maiming if only because she can entirely understand what it means, new respect after he saves her from being raped, surprise and astonishment at his confession in the bath [and possibly also arousal if we go by the previous quote], more astonishment and definitive change of mind about him when he saves her life up until he gives her the sword and promising him that she will finish her quest and maintain her vow becomes the most important thing in her life. 

And this comes to a tragic conclusion when she’s forced to choose in between him and her previous liege lady in the conclusion of her _A Feast For Crows_ storyline.

 

**3.2: _Lady Stoneheart_**

 

At the end of _A Feast For Crows_ , Brienne not only doesn’t find Sansa and comes no closer to her, but ends up in a horrific situation: after risking her life to save some commoners from brigands among which _two_ other Bloody Mummers members, Rorge and Biter, she kills the first and is further disfigured by the other (he bites off part of her face), she spends a while feverish and wakes up to find out that she’s ended up prisoner of _another_ band of outlaws, the Brotherhood Without Banners… whose leader is Catelyn Stark, or better, a revived Catelyn Stark, who now goes by Lady Stoneheart after being brought back to life after the Red Wedding, and she’s of course nowhere near happy to see that she’s going around the Riverlands with a _Lannister_ sword.

Before then, though, she has a series of fever dreams that we already discussed in the context of Jaime’s dream, which will be quickly listed here for different purposes:

 

> She dreamt she was at Harrenhal, down in the bear pit once again. This time it was Biter facing her, huge and bald and maggot-white, with weeping sores upon his cheeks. (..) Brienne fled from him. " **My sword," she called. "Oathkeeper. Please."** The watchers did not answer. Renly was there, with Nimble Dick and Catelyn Stark. Shagwell, Pyg, and Timeon had come, and the corpses from the trees with their sunken cheeks, swollen tongues, and empty eye sockets. Brienne wailed in horror at the sight of them, and Biter grabbed her arm and yanked her close and tore a chunk from her face. **"Jaime," she heard herself scream, "Jaime."**  
> 
> (…)
> 
> Then she was back at the Whispers, standing amongst the ruins and facing Clarence Crabb. He was huge and fierce, mounted on an aurochs shaggier than he was. The beast pawed the ground in fury, tearing deep furrows in the earth. Crabb's teeth had been filed into points. When Brienne went to draw her sword, she found her scabbard empty. "No," she cried, as Ser Clarence charged. **It wasn't fair. She could not fight without her magic sword. Ser** **Jaime** **had given it to her. _The thought of failing him as she had failed Lord Renly made her want to weep. "My sword. Please, I have to find my sword.”_** "Jaime called it Oathkeeper. Please." But the voices did not listen, and Clarence Crabb thundered down on her and swept off her head. Brienne spiraled down into a deeper darkness.
> 
> She was dressed in silk brocade, a quartered gown of blue and red decorated with golden suns and silver crescent moons. On another girl it might have been a pretty gown, but not on her. She was twelve, ungainly and uncomfortable, waiting to meet the young knight her father had arranged for her to marry, a boy six years her senior, sure to be a famous champion one day. She dreaded his arrival. Her bosom was too small, her hands and feet too big. Her hair kept sticking up, and there was a pimple nestled in the fold beside her nose. "He will bring a rose for you," her father promised her, but a rose was no good, a rose could not keep her safe. **_It was a sword she wanted. Oathkeeper. I have to find the girl. I have to find his honor._**
> 
> Finally the doors opened, and her betrothed strode into her father's hall. She tried to greet him as she had been instructed, only to have blood come pouring from her mouth. She had bitten her tongue off as she waited. She spat it at the young knight's feet, and saw the disgust on his face. **"Brienne the Beauty," he said in a mocking tone. "I have seen sows more beautiful than you." He tossed the rose in her face. As he walked away, the griffins on his cloak rippled and blurred and changed to lions**. Jaime! she wanted to cry.  **Jaime, come back for me!** But her tongue lay on the floor by the rose, drowned in blood.

 

What happens when she has fever nightmares that show off _exactly_ where all her insecurities lie, is that she can’t seem to think that she can accomplish _anything_ without the sword Jaime gave her, she’s specifically fixed on the fact that he named it _Oathkeeper_ and she can’t take the idea of failing him… _but she calls for him all the time_. As discussed before, she _wants_ him to come back for her the way he had at the bear pit and she’s fairly open about it until now — but again, it’s _fever dreams_ so it’s normal that they would be about her deepest fears — and the sword is literally the only protection she seems to think is worth anything for herself never mind what can actually allow her to finish her quest and find Sansa and keep her promise to Jaime and she can’t handle the thought of having failed:  
  


> When it was time to mount again, they yanked a leather hood down over her face. There were no eyeholes. The leather muffled the sounds around her. The taste of onions lingered on her tongue, **sharp as the knowledge of her failure. They mean to hang me. She thought of Jaime, of Sansa, of her father back on Tarth, and was glad for the hood. It helped hide the tears welling in her eyes**.

  
   
At this point she’s convinced she failed, but still doesn’t know the full scope of what awaits her; but while sick, she’s called for him so much that the outlaws certainly noticed:

  

> "M'lady," said the big man. "Here she is."
> 
> "Aye," added the one-eyed man. "The Kingslayer's whore."
> 
> She flinched. "Why would you call me that?"
> 
> "I **f I had a silver stag for every time you said his name, I'd be as rich as your friends the Lannisters**."

 

Or: she hasn’t just called for him, she’s done that _so many times_ that the outlaws are convinced that they’re lovers or that it’s what she wants. Which certainly does not bode well for her future explanations when she finds herself in front of her revived liege lady, who is bent on vengeance and who has heard Roose Bolton say that _Jaime Lannister sends his regards_ to Robb before killing him and so assumes that Jaime is behind the Red Wedding, too, when he’s actually the only Lannister who had no clue of it whatsoever.

 

> Lady Stoneheart set the sword aside to read the letter.
> 
> "The sword was given me for a good purpose," said Brienne. **"Ser** **Jaime** **swore an oath to Catelyn Stark ..."**
> 
> **"... before his friends cut her throat for her, that must have been,** " said the big man in the yellow cloak. "We all know about the Kingslayer and his oaths.”
> 
> **It is no good, Brienne realized. No words of mine will sway them. She plunged ahead despite that. "He promised Lady Catelyn her daughters, but by the time we reached King's Landing they were gone.** **Jaime** **sent me out to seek the Lady Sansa ...** "

 

This one passage is extremely interesting to compare with the one we saw before where Jaime discussed the exact same matter with Brynden, Catelyn’s uncle — in both cases, both Jaime and Brienne are trying to explain that _he_ has honor and has no hand in the Red Wedding and that he only wants what’s best for Sansa, but while Jaime doesn’t even try to defend himself to Brynden knowing he won’t be believed, Brienne _still tries_ to make a case for him even if she knows that she won’t be believed. She is quite literally trying to defend his honor when before Catelyn herself sent them off to King’s Landing she thought he had none.

 

> "She wants her son alive, or the men who killed him dead," said the big man. "She wants to feed the crows, like they did at the Red Wedding. Freys and Boltons, aye. We'll give her those, as many as she likes. **All she asks from you is** **Jaime** **Lannister**.”
> 
>  
> 
> **Jaime. The name was a knife, twisting in her belly**.
> 
>  
> 
> "Lady Catelyn, I ... you do not understand, **Jaime ... he saved me from being raped when the Bloody Mummers took us, and later he came back for me, he leapt into the bear pit empty-handed ... I swear to you, he is not the man he was. He sent me after Sansa to keep her safe, he could not have had a part in the Red Wedding**."

  

Even when it doesn’t work, when she’s asked to kill him, she _still_ tries to make his case — she goes back to what we saw changed her mind about him (he saved her from being raped and saved her life and gave her the sword) even while surrounded by bandits and knowing that they want her dead, even when she’s in front of her _first_ liege lady and when before she thought to herself that the vows sworn to the dead were the most important. She’s literally going against her own code for him, but that’s not the end of it.

 

> Lady Catelyn's fingers dug deep into her throat, and the words came rattling out, choked and broken, a stream as cold as ice. **The northman said, "She says that you must choose. Take the sword and slay the Kingslayer, or be hanged for a betrayer. The sword or the noose, she says. _Choose, she says. Choose_**."
> 
> Brienne **remembered her dream, waiting in her father's hall for the boy she was to marry. In the dream she had bitten off her tongue**. My mouth was full of blood. She took a ragged breath and said, " **I will not make that choice**."
> 
> There was a long silence. Then Lady Stoneheart spoke again. This time Brienne understood her words. There were only two. **"Hang them," she croaked**.

 

And now we are at _the_ turning point, or better: while eventually she takes it back in order to save the life of her two traveling companions who had no responsibility in this situation (and we’ll discuss it in the next and last part dedicated to Jaime’s only chapter in the following book), _she’s willing to die for him rather than kill him_. Of course he doesn’t know that and he’s not aware of that, but the moment she’s told that she can either honor her _first_ oath to Catelyn and kill him or not do it and get hanged, first she thinks of the dream with _the boy she was to marry_ where she had _bitten off her tongue_ (and so couldn’t speak)… and when she speaks she says she won’t make that choice, but by not taking it _she’s actually choosing to die_ rather than kill him.

Now, _before_ fighting the last bout of brigands, this is what Brienne had thought:

 

> Seven, Brienne thought again, despairing. **She had no chance against seven, she knew. _No chance, and no choice._**
> 
> **She stepped out into the rain, Oathkeeper in hand**. "Leave her be. If you want to rape someone, try me."

 

When she thought she had _no chance and no choice_ , she walked out and fought them anyway because it was the right thing to do (and the honorable thing to do) and now she has _no choice_ again… and still goes to her death anyway, but while in that instance she was doing it because it was what a knight should do, now she’s doing it _because she’d rather die than harm Jaime_ , and it’s not just a testament to _her_ feelings for him (especially because in order to not kill him she’s going against her own _most sacred_ oath), but it’s something literally _no one_ else ever has done for him or would do for him at this point in the series — no one would die _for_ him (especially not his sister), but _she_ would same as _he_ would have for her. At this point she’s being quite literally depicted as _way_ more than his protector or captor; she’s being coded pretty much as the knight in shining armor in their relationship, however one interprets it, because she’s willing to _die for him_ without expecting anything in return, especially the reciprocation of her feelings.

From what we’ll see of the one Jaime chapter in _A Dance With Dragons_ , she might _not_ be wholly right about it, but the fact that her _A Feast For Crows_ journey starts with her being sent off on a quest by _him_ and vowing to fulfill it at all costs also to fulfill her vows to Catelyn and ends with choosing to renounce those vows and her own life for his well-being because he’s _that_ important to her tells volumes about how he changed her in return and how she feels for him.


	7. A Dance with Dragons

Coming to the end of their journey in the books (for now) we have the one POV chapter Jaime has in _A Dance With Dragons_ , the last published book in the series, from which we can nonetheless surmise a few important things, along with others from Cersei’s chapters.

What happens in the aforementioned chapter is that Jaime is off trying to deal with the last Stark supporters in the Riverlands so he can finish off his mission, just after, in _A Feast For Crows_ , he had burned a letter from Cersei requesting help:

 

> “Past time this was ended, thought Jaime Lannister. With Riverrun now safely in Lannister hands, Raventree was the remnant of the Young Wolf’s short-lived kingdom. Once it yielded, his work along the Trident would be done, and he would be free to return to King’s Landing. **_To the king, he told himself, but another part of him whispered, to Cersei_**.
> 
> **_He would have to face her, he supposed_**. Assuming the High Septon had not put her to death by the time he got back to the city. “Come at once,” she had written, in the letter he’d had Peck burn at Riverrun. “Help me. Save me. I need you now as I have never needed you before. I love you. I love you. I love you. Come at once.” Her need was real enough, Jaime did not doubt. As for the rest … she’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know … **_Even if he had gone back, he could not hope to save her. She was guilty of every treason laid against her, and he was short a sword hand_**.”

 

Now, Jaime has previously burned the letter asking for help, and now he _supposes_ he will have to face her when he goes back, and actually his priority seems to be his king/son, not _Cersei_ , she’s almost an afterthought. And while in the beginning of the series he _would_ have come at once, now that he’s gone through everything that happened to him since he was sent back home with Brienne and has been away from her for a long time and knows she cheated on him, he doesn’t at all feel motivated to go back and help her, and he doesn’t try to justify her — he actually gives himself an out by saying that since she’s actually guilty and he’s short a sword hand he couldn’t help her anyway and so he’s not going at once. This is a complete turnaround from how he was in the beginning, where he couldn’t seem to wait to be back with her, but it’s not everything.

He goes to find one of the lords he should discuss with in order to make sure Ravenree yields, finds him having sex and interrupts the act, but what’s interesting is the entire scene and Jaime’s reaction to it:

 

> “My mother named me Hildy, ser.” She pulled a soiled shift down over her head and shook her hair out. Her face was almost as dirty as her feet and she had enough hair between her legs to pass for Bracken’s sister, **_but there was something appealing about her all the same. That pug nose, her shaggy mane of hair_**  … or the way she did a little curtsy after she had stepped into her skirt. “Have you seen my other shoe, m’lord?”
> 
> The question seemed to vex Lord Bracken. “Am I a bloody handmaid, to fetch you shoes? Go barefoot if you must. Just go.”
> 
> “Does that mean m’lord won’t be taking me home with him, to pray with his little wife?” Laughing, Hildy gave Jaime a brazen look. **“Do you have a little wife, ser?”**
> 
> _No, I have a sister_. “What color is my cloak?”
> 
> “White,” she said, “but your hand is solid gold. I like that in a man. And what is it you like in a woman, m’lord?”
> 
> “ **Innocence**.”
> 
> “In a woman, I said. Not a daughter.”

 

First thing: when he finds something _appealing_ in Hildy physically, he notices that she has a _pug nose_ and a _shaggy mane of hair_ , which is technically… _not_ how Cersei looks like, and admittedly not exactly standardly beautiful traits. (Also, as we saw in the beginning of the Brienne-focused chapter, Catelyn describes her hair as _a squirrel's nest of dirty straw_ , which sounds remarkably similar to what he’s seeing here.) 

When he’s asked if he has a wife he thinks _I have a sister_ , but when asked _what he likes in a woman_ … he answers _innocence_. Now, not going into the possible sexual implications of the word (also because then technically Jaime should claim that more than about most people in the books since he’s always been faithful to one woman only and actually doesn’t have much sexual experience), which aren’t really the point here, he has described Cersei as _guilty_ of every treason before, and he considers her guilty of cheating on him as well… which is the entire opposite of _innocent,_ in a legal way of speaking.

Now, it would be probably reaching to decide immediately that he means _specifically Brienne_ with that, as the fact that he realized that he finds attractive traits that _don’t_ belong to his sister and that he said he likes innocence in women wouldn’t be really enough on its own. But then we have another specific instance where he thinks about Brienne again and the ending of the chapter in question.

 

> “Not if you kill the sons as well. Ask the Casterlys about that if you doubt me. Ask Lord and Lady Tarbeck, or the Reynes of Castamere. Ask the Prince of Dragonstone.” For an instant, the deep red clouds that crowned the western hills reminded him of Rhaegar’s children, all wrapped up in crimson cloaks.
> 
> “Is that why you killed all the Starks?”
> 
> “Not all,” said Jaime. “Lord Eddard’s daughters live. One has just been wed. The other …” **_Brienne, where are you? Have you found her?_** “… if the gods are good, she’ll forget she was a Stark. She’ll wed some burly blacksmith or fat-faced innkeep, fill his house with children, and never need to fear that some knight might come along to smash their heads against a wall.”

 

While he heads back with one of the hostages he took after successfully completing his task, when he’s accused of _having killed all the Starks_ just after remembering how Rhaegar Targaryen’s children died (something he’s felt guilty of for years) he defends himself saying that the daughters are still alive and thinking about Sansa… _he wonders where Brienne is and if she found her_ , so it’s obvious that he still hopes Brienne got to save her. It’s also fairly telling of how much he’s still traumatized by the events happened during the Rebellion that he thinks she’d be happier if she pretended to not be who she was anymore so her children wouldn’t risk meeting the ending that the ones he couldn’t protect did.

Then things come to an end (as far as we know) in the ending of the chapter in question… where _Brienne herself_ shows up in his tent:

 

> “It was near midnight when two came riding back with a woman they had taken captive. “She rode up bold as you please, m’lord, demanding words with you.”
> 
> Jaime _scrambled_ to his feet. “ ** _My lady. I had not thought to see you again so soon.” Gods be good, she looks ten years older than when I saw her last. And what’s happened to her face? “That bandage … you’ve been wounded …”_**
> 
> “A bite.” She touched the hilt of her sword, **the sword that he had given her. Oathkeeper**. 
> 
> “ **My lord** , you gave me a quest.”
> 
> “The girl. Have you found her?”
> 
> “I have,” said Brienne, Maid of Tarth.
> 
> “Where is she?”
> 
> “A day’s ride. I can take you to her, ser … but you will need to come alone. Elsewise, the Hound will kill her.”

 

Now, as we know from the previous chapter, if she’s not dead then she’s obviously lying to him, as her story proves — we know that there’s no Hound involved in her travels and that she _hasn’t_ found Sansa, so she’s obviously trying to get him to leave in order to save her traveling companions, and we can deduce that she’s lying and putting some distance behind them by only calling him _my lord_ or _ser,_ not using his name as she had before, but what’s important is how _he_ reacts to her showing up.

First he _scrambles_ to his feet, which denotes a certain urgency. Then he straight-up calls her _my lady_ — not wench, not Brienne, but the most courteous way he could call her, and then _immediately_ notices that her time on the road has taken a toll on her, that she looks older and that she’s been wounded. She cuts him short and then when she touches the sword, he thinks about it in the _exact same terms that she had used in her A Feast For Crows chapters._ He’s happy to see her, and he’s _worried_ about her, and he wants to know if she fulfilled her quest, and there’s absolutely none of any of the scorn he ever reserved her at this point… this _after_ he’s admitted to himself that he finds attractive a woman who’s not a great beauty and said he would like _innocence_ in women.

The chapter ends there and we have no further POVs from either him or Brienne, so technically we don’t know what happened to them… _except_ that we do thanks to Cersei’s following chapters, which give us actually very important information when it comes to their whereabouts:

  

> “You are forgiven. Now sit. I bring some hard tidings, Cersei.”
> 
> His words frightened her. “Has something happened to Tommen? Please, no. I have been so afraid for my son. No one will tell me anything. Please tell me that Tommen is well.”
> 
> “His Grace is well. He asks about you often.” Ser Kevan laid his hands on her shoulders, held her at arm’s length.
> 
> “Jaime, then? Is it Jaime?”
> 
> “No. Jaime is still in the riverlands, somewhere.”
> 
> **_“Somewhere?” She did not like the sound of that._ **
> 
> “He took Raventree and accepted Lord Blackwood’s surrender,” said her uncle, “but on his way back to Riverrun **_he left his tail and went off with a woman_**.”
> 
> **_“A woman?” Cersei stared at him, uncomprehending. “What woman? Why? Where did they go?”_ **
> 
> **_“No one knows. We’ve had no further word of him. The woman may have been the Evenstar’s daughter, Lady Brienne.”_ **
> 
> Her. **_The queen remembered the Maid of Tarth, a huge, ugly, shambling thing who dressed in man’s mail. Jaime would never abandon me for such a creature_**. **My raven never reached him, elsewise he would have come**.

 

So: we know that Jaime _did_ in fact leave with Brienne and we have the confirmation, and we know that no one’s heard of them since, but the chapter in question is also _way_ farther than Jaime’s in the books and a fair amount of things have happened in between, so we can also assume that not only they disappeared, but they disappeared a fair amount of time before this conversation happens. It’s also telling of Cersei’s sureness of Jaime’s feelings for her regardless of the two of them always being at odds before he left that she can’t even conceive that he might have left for a ‘huge, ugly shambling thing’/‘such a creature’, and she has to assume that he never got her letter (the one he burned) to come to terms with the fact that he _did_ choose Brienne over her. And in both her POVs and her uncle’s, we have a confirmation that Jaime _hasn’t_ in fact come back or provided any further news of his whereabouts until the very ending of the books, which suggests that at least weeks have passed by:

 

> That road led nowhere, though. **Jaime** **’s sword hand was gone, and so was he, vanished with the woman Brienne somewhere in the riverlands.** The queen had to find another defender or today’s ordeal would be the least of her travails. Her enemies were accusing her of treason.
> 
> //
> 
> Tonight the duty had fallen to Ser Meryn Trant. With Balon Swann hunting the rogue knight Darkstar down in Dorne, Loras Tyrell gravely wounded on Dragonstone, and  **Jaime** **vanished in the riverlands** , only four of the White Swords remained in King's Landing, and Ser Kevan had thrown Osmund Kettleblack (and his brother Osfryd) into the dungeon within hours of Cersei's confessing that she had taken both men as lovers.
> 
> //
> 
> Cersei lifted her chin, her green eyes shining in the candlelight. **“Jaime? Have you had word?"**
> 
> **“None. Cersei, you may need to prepare yourself for—”**
> 
> “If he were dead, I would know it. We came into this world together, Uncle. He would not go without me.”

 

So: Jaime left with Brienne and whatever happened, he _hasn’t come back_ nor sent any news to court. This after that one chapter in which he seemed reluctant to want to go back and was hoping all along for Brienne to succeed in her quest.


	8. Conclusion

**_CONCLUSION: Beyond_ ** **A Dance with Dragons**

  

Of course at this point analysis goes into speculation territory, but it’s logical to assume that if they were both dead the bodies would have been recovered — there would have been no point in killing them and then not claim it, especially coming from people bent on avenging the Red Wedding. So, we _can_ assume that neither of them are dead or were in fact killed by the Brotherhood. Where would they be then? Obviously we can’t know until _The Winds of Winter_ is published, but given everything that has been analyzed until this point and given that Brienne has been put in the _exact_ situation Jaime was with Aerys (having to choose between her vows to a liege lady gone insane and the man she loves same as Jaime had to choose between his vows to a liege lord that was long mad and the lives of an entire city) and that it would be a pretty large coincidence if it was, we could leave text and go into hypothetical territory. 

In this hypothetical territory we might speculate that if Brienne is put in front of the same choice Jaime had to take _and_ if neither of them has been found dead yet… then she _could_ have taken the same choice he had to. Technically, she has _already_ chose him over her vows at the cost of her life, but she had to go back on it to save others; but if those lives weren’t at stake anymore and she had to do it again, it _could_ happen that she would rather kill her Lady Stoneheart than him. If that happened and if he was made aware of what she’s done while captive before (called for him so much that the Brotherhood assumed she was his whore _and_ initially chosen to be hanged for him), he would see that not only she never meant to betray him but was actually willing to die for him. Knowing Brienne, even if she _did_ kill Stoneheart, she _would_ still go on and search for Sansa, and we also know that he not so subtly wishes he had gone with her and that he _didn’t_ want to go back to King’s Landing.

Could it be that right now they’re actually trying to fulfill their oath together the way they both yearned for during _A Feast For Crows_ and that they might have come clean about what has been carefully built up between them until now?

It’s certainly possible — we cannot know until book six is published. But what we _can_ know is that Brienne and Jaime have an incredibly well-built and written relationship that progressively gets them to change for the better, push themselves to be better people and see beyond appearances in an amazingly conceived reversal/deconstruction of both gender norms, courtly love-related tropes, the beauty and the beast trope (turned on its head more than once as she’s ugly outside and beautiful inside, he’s beautiful outside and seen as ugly inside but the both of them are actually fairly damaged but genuinely _not bad_ people who see each other for who they really are) and which is absolutely not common in either literature or media.

Regardless of how they story ends, their journey and the way they affect each other and reflects in their storylines is one of the series’s best arcs, and the fact that as we said it’s one of the few relationships in a fairly grim series which has meant betterment for both people involved; and its engagement of two people who aren’t exactly standard types in mainstream literature makes it even more poignant from a literary stand point. It really doesn’t matter whether they actually get together in the next two books or whether they get to have a happy ending if they do: just the fact that it’s _possible_ and the narrative doesn’t discard it at once but actually seems to support it is in itself fairly groundbreaking, and hopefully it will pave the way for similar instances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that was the bulk of it. See you with some other separated essays concerning those two deconstructing knightly tropes and how J's lack of a right hand has influenced their relationship in the next few days.
> 
> Also, I said what I said and *that*'s canon. D&D can choke on it. ;)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Brienne and Jaime’s relationship: a textual analysis of their journey [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21892765) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)




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